+ Linux and Open Source have become a significant reality in the + working world of Information Technology. An indirect result has been a + "rebirth" of the mainframe as a strategic platform for enterprise + computing. In this session Jim Elliott, IBM's Linux Advocate, will provide + an overview of these technologies and an inside look at IBM's participation + in the community. Jim will examine Linux usage on the desktop, embedded + systems and servers, a reality check on the common misconceptions that + surround Linux and Open Source, and an overview of the history and current + design of IBM's mainframe servers.
++ Jim Elliott is the Linux Advocate for IBM Canada. He is responsible + for IBM's participation in Linux and Open Source activities and IBM's + mainframe operating systems in Canada and the Caribbean. Jim is a popular + speaker on Linux and Open Source at conferences and user groups across the + Americas and Europe and has spoken to over 300 organizations over the past + three years. Over his 30 years with IBM he has been the co-author of over + 15 IBM publications and he also coordinated the launch of Linux on IBM + mainframes in the Americas. In his spare time, Jim is addicted to reading + historical mystery novels and travel to their locales. +
++ Modern graphics processors allow developers to upload small "shader + programs" to the GPU, which can be executed per-vertex or even + per-pixel during the rendering. Such shaders allow stunning effects to + be performed in real-time, but unfortunately aren't very easy to + program since one generally has to write them at the assembly level. +
+ Recently a few high-level languages for shader programming have become + available. Sh, a result of research at UW, is one such language. It + allows programming powerful shaders in simple and intuitive ways. Sh + is particularily interesting because of the way it is + implemented. Instead of coming up with a language grammar and writing + a full-fledged compiler, Sh is implemented as a C++ library, and + shader programs are effectively written in C++. The actual compilation + then takes place in a manner similar to JIT (Just-in-time) + compilers. This has many advantages over the traditional approach, + including C++'s familiar syntax for users, and much less work for the + Sh implementers. +
+ In this talk I will give an overview of GPUs and the Sh language as + well as some interesting details on how Sh was implemented. +
+ Stefanus Du Toit is a research assistant at the University of + Waterloo. He has implemented the current version of Sh from scratch + and is actively developing it under supervision of Michael McCool, the + original designer of the language. +
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