- csc-general - CSC Mailman

Upcoming events: Gavriel State on future of 3D graphics in software, Path Tracing tutorial, CSC Goes Outside, and Code Party 1
by Computer Science Club 12 Jul '13

12 Jul '13

Hello CSC Members! Hope your term's coming to an agreeable end. We have a variety of events coming up in the next couple of weeks to finish off the term. == Path Tracing by Syed Albiz Thursday, July 18, 17:00, in MC 4041 Abstract: As a follow on to last term's tutorial on building a ray-tracer from scratch, I'll be presenting the basic mechanics of how a bidirectional path- tracer creates a globally illuminated scene, advantages and limitations of this approach over other offline global illumination techniques along with simple example path-tracer written in C++, and (time permitting) opportunities for hardware acceleration on GPUs. == CSC Goes Outside! Friday, July 19, 19:00, EV Fire Pit Event will happen rain or shine. Come out for an evening at a campfire BBQ at the Laurel Creek Firepit across from the Environment building / near Velocity. Feel free to bring friends, musical instruments, frisbees, or other entertainment. We'll have more than sufficient meat, Smores, Ice cream, etc. available for enjoyment. =) == The Future of 3D Graphics is in Software! by Gavriel State, founder of TransGaming and Nicolas Capens Monday, July 22nd, 17:00, in MC 4020 Abstract: For some time now, it has been clear that there is strong momentum for convergence between CPU and GPU technologies. Initially, each technology used radically different approaches to processing, but over time GPUs have evolved to support more general purpose use while CPUs have evolved to include advanced vector processing and multiple execution cores. At TransGaming, we believe that this convergence will continue to the point where typical systems have only one type of processing unit, with large numbers of cores and very wide vector execution units available for high performance parallel execution. In this kind of environment, all graphics processing will ultimately take place in software. In this talk, we will explore the converging nature of CPU and GPU approaches to processing, how dynamic specialization allows CPUs to efficiently perform tasks usually done by GPUs, and why we believe that the increased flexibility of more programmable architectures will ultimately win out over fixed function hardware, even in areas such as texture sampling. *TransGaming Inc.* works at the cutting edge of 3D graphics, building technologies that bridge the gap between platform boundaries to allow games to be played on a variety of devices and operating systems. TransGaming works with other industry leaders to update established APIs such as OpenGL, while also breaking new ground in software rendering technology, which we believe will become increasingly important as CPU and GPU technologies converge. *Nicolas Capens* is the architect of SwiftShader, TransGaming's high performance software renderer, and is also deeply involved in the ANGLE project, which provides efficient translation from OpenGL ES to Direct3D APIs for implementing WebGL on Windows. Nicolas received his MSci.Eng. degree in computer science from Ghent University in 2007. *Gavriel* *State *(Gav) is TransGaming's Founder & CTO, and has worked in graphics and portability for over 20 year on dozens of platforms and APIs. Gav wrote his first software renderer when taking CS488 at UW, where he later graduated with a B.A.Sc. in Systems Design Engineering. == Code Party 1 Friday, July 26, 19:00, in MC Comfy Lounge Celebrate the last Friday of classes working on some personal projects or just hanging out with the cool crowd. Pizza and other refreshments will be provided, as well as music, entertainment, and potentially more Artemis later in the evening. (We do want to get some coding done this time around ;) ) == Future events: The following week is likely to include CSC Clean Up Party and our termly Ctrl+D EOT party. Information will come forth closer to date. == Looking forward to seeing you at our events. Calum T. Dalek Overlord, CSC X-TERMINATE

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Upcoming CSC Talk: 3D Movies and Computer Science
by Computer Science Club 08 Jul '13

08 Jul '13

Hello CSC Members! We are hosting a faculty talk this Thursday, July 11 in MC 4041: 3D Movies and Computer Science by Lesley Northam Abstract: While humans started making 3D motion pictures in the 1800's, several technical and artistic challenges prevented widespread interest in the medium. By investing heavily in a computerized production pipeline, James Cameron's 2009 release of Avatar ushered in an era of mainstream interest in 3D film. However, many technical and artistic problems still find their way into otherwise-modern 3D movies. The talk explores some of these problems while introducing the fundamentals of 3D film-making from a CS perspective. Hope to see you there! Calum T. Dalek Overlord, CSC X-TERMINATE

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Re: [CSC] CSC Goes Outside POSTPONED DUE TO RAIN to Friday, July 12, 2013
by Computer Science Club 05 Jul '13

05 Jul '13

Hey all, CSC Goes Outside has been cancelled tonight due to rain. We will announce location once we have everything booked early next week. Enjoy your weekend everyone! =) Calum T. Dalek / ctdalek EXTERMINATE

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CSC Goes Outside | Friday, July 5, 2013
by Computer Science Club 04 Jul '13

04 Jul '13

Hello, CSC is going outside tomorrow: Friday, July 5. We're having a campfire BBQ at 7PM at the Laurel Creek firepit, across from Environment 3. There will be meat and other food items for consumption. Feel free to bring friends, musical instruments, a frisbee, and/or other fun things. We hope to see you there! Shane Creighton-Young / srcreigh President

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CODE PARTY 0!
by Computer Science Club 31 May '13

31 May '13

Dear CS Clubers, I am excited to announce our first code party of Spring 2013! Code Party 0 will take place in MC Comfy Lounge at 7:00pm on Friday June 7, 2013. Please bring your laptops and get ready to have fun! Unix 101 will precede the code party and will start at 6:00pm in the same location. I can't wait to see you all there! Cheers, VVIJAYAN CSC VEEP

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Elections Reminder & Voting Instructions
by Computer Science Club 14 May '13

14 May '13

Hey CSC members! Nominations have closed for the Spring 2013 executive elections. The lists of nominees is at the bottom of this message. The elections will be held tomorrow at 6:00 PM in the Comfy Lounge. As usual, all CSC members who are also MathSoc members (which for the most part means current math students) are allowed to vote. Following the elections, the System Administrator will be appointed, as well as the Office Manager and the Librarian. If you are unable to attend, please send a ranked list of candidates for each position. You may list as many or as few candidates as you would like. Your voted will be counted tomorrow along with those from the meeting. If you have any other questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me at cro(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca scshunt CRO (Chronic Ragnarok Obliterator) President jdonland, laden, srcreigh, m4burns, yj2kim, vvijayan Vice-President srcreigh, m4burns, vvijyaan, laden Treasurer baherghi, dchlobow, m4burns, omsmith, vvijayan, jj2baile Secretary yj2kim, m4burns, vvijayan

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CSC Elections: Wednesday, May 15, 6:00 PM, MC Comfy Lounge
by Computer Science Club 11 May '13

11 May '13

Hey CSC, The elections for the Spring term executive will be held next Wednesday, May 15, at 6:00 PM in the Comfy Lounge. As per the usual, the President, Vice-President, Treasurer, and Secretary will be elected by the membership, and the Sysadmin will be selected and approved. Once the executive have been picked, they appoint a new Office Manager and Librarian. The new executive will be held personally responsible for every broken chair in the office, for every moment of downtime, and for every time I receive a piece of spam. Tread wisely! Nominations can be sent to me by email, or can be written on the whiteboard in the CSC office. Nominations must be submitted by 4:30 PM on Tuesday, May 14. I will send out an email with a list of nominees and instructions on remote voting at that time. Sean CRO (Chief Rambling Orator)

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Call for Member Talks
by Computer Science Club 11 Mar '13

11 Mar '13

Greetings, members. This is our termly call for member talks. As a CSC member, you have the opportunity to present a topic of your choice to interested CSC members and others in the university community! Talks should run about one hour. We will take care of room booking, refreshments, video recording, and promotion. If you're interested, send us an abstract no later than March 24th. Cheers, Marc Burns VP, Computer Science Club

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Talk on C++ and Machine Architecture
by Computer Science Club 25 Feb '13

25 Feb '13

Greetings, members. The University of Waterloo Computer Science Club hereby cordially invites you to attend a talk by Herb Sutter on the topics of Machine Architecture, Performance, and Scalability. Herb's talk will be held on Thursday, February 28th at 4:30 PM in DC 1302. An abstract: Machine Architecture, Performance, and Scalability: Things Your Programming Language Never Told You. High-level languages insulate the programmer from the machine. That's a wonderful thing -- except when it obscures the answers to the fundamental questions of "What does the program do?" and "How much does it cost?" The C++ and C# programmer is less insulated than most, and still we find that programmers are consistently surprised at what simple code actually does and how expensive it can be -- not because of any complexity of a language, but because of being unaware of the complexity of the machine on which the program actually runs. This talk examines the "real meanings" and "true costs" of the code we write and run, especially on commodity and server systems, by delving into the performance effects of bandwidth vs. latency limitations, the ever-deepening memory hierarchy, the changing costs arising from the hardware concurrency explosion, memory model effects all the way from the compiler to the CPU to the chipset to the cache, and more -- and what you can do about them. ---- Herb Sutter is an influential authority on software development using C++ and concurrency. He is the best selling author of Exceptional C++ and three other books, along with hundreds of technical papers and articles including the widely-cited essay "The Free Lunch Is Over" which described the software sea change now in progress to exploit increasingly parallel hardware. He is chair of the ISO C++ standards committee and chief native languages architect at Microsoft. If you have received this message twice, we apologise. Cheers, Calum T. Dalek Chairbeing Extraordinaire Computer Science Club University of Waterloo

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Scheduled Downtime Feb 3 12PM-Feb 4 12PM
by Computer Science Club 02 Feb '13

02 Feb '13

Greetings programs, The CSC will be having scheduled downtime on the following hosts starting Sunday, February 3rd, 12PM: - ginseng - mail Services affected will be the following: - member home directories - club hosting - mail delivery (SMTP) As part of our continued expansion of service, we have recently acquired network storage device, and will be migrating user home directories to this device. This will allow us to host more concurrent users (both members and clubs), in addition to supporting snapshots of user home directories to facilitate backup capabilities. We are aware of the importance of having high service availability to not only our members, but to the organizations whose websites we host as well. As such, we have decided to make your data _read-only_ but still accessible during the course of migration. This means that while you will still be able to log in, you will be _unable_ to make any modifications to your files during this time period. This also means that any mail you may normally receive will be _delayed_ by up to 24 hours. It is also important to also note that database services will still be accessible during the course of the migration. We have allotted 24 hours for the process of migration. We expect all services to be up by Monday, February 4th, 12PM. To help us ensure a smooth migration, we ask that you please end any long-running jobs that write to files in your home directory. We cannot make any guarantees that these jobs will perform correctly during the migration. Cheers, Systems Committee

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