• Larry Rudolph, VMware, rudolph@vmware.com
• David Kaeli, Northeastern University, kaeli@ece.neu.edu

For virtualization to be used in high performance environments, these demanding applications must enjoy good performance when running on virtualized computer systems. Scalable high performance systems pose real challenges for virtualization systems. Many high performance applications require all available memory, CPU, and network bandwidth for at least part of their execution, thereby obviating the traditional benefits of resource over-commitment provided by virtualization. On the other hand, servers, which are often virtualized, contain many CPU's and GPU's, are building blocks for high performance applications.

The growing number of massive data centers, containing such servers, are a great opportunity for the high performance community but requires a way of dealing with the fact that virtualization of the data center is a reality. This workshop hopes to explore ways to make this a reality, from ways to identify performance degradation, to modifications in programs, compiler, operating systems, and architectures. Success stories or potential successful applications of virtualized high performance systems are also encouraged.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following as they apply to high performance virtualized systems, clusters, data centers or clouds:

• High Performance applications and environments that will benefit from virtualization
• Performance studies reporting on scalability in a virtualized environment
• Use of performance counters and profiling tools in high performance virtualized systems
• Measuring efficiency (when performance is deemed sufficient)
  • Tools and analysis techniques
  • New metrics, such as FLOPS per watt, per carbon unit, per heat unit
• New or improved algorithms to address performance efficiency or power efficiency
  • Programming, scheduling, resource allocation techniques for efficiency
  • Compiler and operating system techniques
  • Architecture
• Other advantages of virtualization for high performance applications

In order to live up to its title, this workshop should include some work by its attendees. Time will be dedicated to producing a draft document that outlines the challenges of high performance virtualization and how to address them.

All paper submissions will be handled electronically. Papers in PDF format should be submitted electronically by e-mail to kaeli@ece.neu.edu or rudolph@vmware.com no later than November 10, 2009. The papers should be prepared using the 2-column ACM conference format and no longer than 8 pages. Submission of the paper implies that at least one of the authors will register and present the paper at the workshop if the paper is accepted. The papers will be included in the ACM online International Conference Proceedings Series.

The workshop is also going to feature position papers. These should be submitted to the program chairs by the same deadline, should make a clear case for the position being taken, and suggest open questions that need to be addressed by both academia and industry. Submission should be prepared using the 2-column ACM conference format and no longer than 4 pages.

Important Dates: