Information processing devices are pervasive in our society; from the 5 dollar watches to multi-billions satellite network. These devices have allowed the information revolution which is developing around us. It has transformed not only the way we communicate or entertain ourselves but also the way we do science and even the way we think. All this information is manipulated using the classical approximation to the laws of physics, but we know that there is a better approximation: the quantum mechanical laws. Would using quantum mechanics for information processing be an impediment or could it be an advantage? This is the fundamental question at the heart of quantum information processing (QIP). QIP is a young field with an incredible potential impact reaching from the way we understand fundamental physics to technological applications. I will give an overview of the Institute for Quantum Computing, comment on the effort in this field at Waterloo and in Canada and, time permitted visit some of the IQC labs.
Contestants will be writing an artificial intelligence to play Risk. The prize will be awarded to the intelligence which wins the most head-to-head matches against competing entries. We're providing easy APIs for several languages, as well as full documentation of the game protocol so contestants can write wrappers for any additional language they wish to work in.
We officially support entries in Scheme, Perl, Java, C, and C++. If you would like help developing an API for some other language contact us through the systems committee mailing list (we will require that your API is made available to all entrants).
To kick off the contest we're hosting an in-house coding session starting at 4:00PM on Thursday, February 14th in MC2061. Members of our contest administration team will be available to help you work out the details of our APIs, answer questions, and provide the necessities of life (ie, pizza). Submissions will open no later than 5:00PM on February 14th and will close no earlier than 12:00PM on February 17th.
Visit our contest site here!
Tyler Lessard
Tyler Lessard from RIM will present a brief history of BlackBerry technology and will discuss how the evolution of BlackBerry as an end-to-end hardware, software and services platform has been instrumental to its success and growth in the market. Find out how the BlackBerry service components integrate with wireless carrier networks and get a sneak peek at where the wireless data market is going.
The problem: coordinating and communicating between multiple processors in a distributed system (possibly containing heterogeneous elements)
The open source TIPC (transparent interprocess communication) protocol has been incorporated into the Linux kernel and is available in VxWorks and, soon, other OSes. This emerging protocol has a number of advantages in a clustered environment to simplify application development while maintaining a familiar socket programming interface. The service oriented capabilities of TIPC help in applications easily finding required services in a system. The location transparent aspect of TIPC allows services to be located anywhere in the system as well as allowing redundant services for both load reduction and backup. Learn about the emerging cluster protocol.
Elections are scheduled for Tues, Jan 15 @ 4:30 pm in the comfy lounge. The nomination period closes on Mon, Jan 14 @ 4:30 pm. Candidates should not engage in campaigning after the nomination period has closed.
Elections are scheduled for Tues, Jan 15 @ 4:30 pm in the comfy lounge. The nomination period closes on Mon, Jan 14 @ 4:30 pm. Candidates should not engage in campaigning after the nomination period has closed.