CLUSTER 2018

20th IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing (CLUSTER)
Belfast, UK
September 10-13, 2018

IMPORTANT DATES:
Abstract deadline: May 1, 2018
Full Papers due: May 8, 2018 (this is a hard deadline; no extensions are anticipated)
Paper Acceptance Notification: July 3, 2018
Camera-ready deadline: July 31, 2018
Deadlines are Anywhere on Earth (AoE)

Clusters are the primary architecture for building today¹s rapidly evolving cloud and HPC infrastructures, and are used to solve some of the most complex problems. The challenge to make them scalable, efficient, and more functional requires a community effort in the areas of cluster system design, management and monitoring, at the hardware, system, middleware and application levels.

Following the successes of previous IEEE Cluster conferences, we again solicit high-quality original work that advances the state-of-the-art in clusters and closely related fields. All papers will be rigorously peer-reviewed for their originality, technical depth and correctness, potential impact, relevance to the conference, and quality of presentation. Research papers must clearly demonstrate novel research contributions while papers reporting experiences must clearly describe lessons learned and impact, along with the utility of the approach compared to previous ones.

Authors must indicate the primary area of preference out of the four areas below. They may optionally rank the other areas. The paper may be accepted as a full 10-page paper, or the committee might decide to accept it as a short paper with 4 pages in the proceedings. Short 4-page paper submissions will also be considered. Note: references are not counted in the above limits on the number of pages.

Area 1: Application, Algorithms, and Libraries
– HPC and Big Data application studies on large-scale clusters
– Applications at the boundary of HPC and Big Data
– New applications for converged HPC/Big Data clusters
– Application-level performance and energy modeling and measurement
– Novel algorithms on clusters
– Hybrid programming techniques in applications and libraries(e.g., MPI+X)
– Cluster benchmarks
– Application-level libraries on clusters
– Effective use of clusters in novel applications
– Performance evaluation tools

Area 2: Architecture, Network/Communications, and Management
– Node and system architecture for HPC and Big Data clusters
– Architecture for converged HPC/Big Data clusters
– Energy-efficient cluster architectures
– Packaging, power and cooling
– Accelerators, reconfigurable and domain-specific hardware
– Heterogeneous clusters
– Interconnect/memory architectures
– Single system/distributed image clusters
– Administration, monitoring and maintenance tools

Area 3: Programming and System Software
– Cluster system software/operating systems
– Programming models for converged HPC/Big Data systems
– System software supporting the convergence of HPC and Big Data processing
– Cloud-enabling cluster technologies and virtualization
– Energy-efficient middleware
– Cluster system-level protocols and APIs
– Cluster security
– Resource and job management
– Programming and software development environments on clusters
– Fault tolerance and high-availability

Area 4: Data, Storage, and Visualization
– Cluster architectures for Big Data storage and processing
– Middleware for Big Data management
– Cluster-based cloud architectures for Big Data
– Storage systems supporting the convergence of HPC and Big Data processing
– File systems and I/O libraries
– Support and integration of non-volatile memory
– Visualization clusters and tiled displays
– Big data visualization tools
– Programming models for big data processing
– Big data application studies on cluster architectures

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Submissions must be in PDF format. Since the camera-ready version of accepted papers must be compliant with the IEEE Xplore format for publication, submitted papers must conform to the following Xplore layout, page limit, and font size:
– Submissions are required to be within 10 pages (not counting references).
– Submissions must be single-spaced, 2-column numbered pages in IEEE Xplore format (8.5×11-inch paper, margins in inches — top: 0.75, bottom: 1.0, sides:0.625, and between columns:0.25, main text: 10pt).
– Paper will NOT be reviewed double-blind. Author names and affiliations should be included in the submitted paper, and appropriate citations of prior work must be included.
– LaTeX and Word Templates are available at http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html
– Only web-based submissions are allowed.

ORGANIZERS:
General Co-chairs:
Dimitrios Nikolopoulos, Queen’s University Belfast, UK
Bronis R. de Supinski, Queen’s University Belfast, UK

Program Chair:
Paul H J Kelly, Imperial College London, UK

Local Arrangements Chair:
Katie Stewart, Queen¹s University Belfast, UK