Tag Archives: FPGA

“Estimating Cost of FPGA Floating Point Performance” tonight at AACS

If you've heard about FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) or perhaps just have an interest in high performance computing, tonight's Ann Arbor Computer Society meeting is where you want to be.  I'm going, because I have an interest in such things, but also because I've known Dave Strenski, the speaker, since 1985 or so, and he always has something interesting to say.  AACS members/attendees may recall that Dave did a talk for AACS a while back about Solar Voltaic Power at the Ypsilanti Food Coop.  Dave's wide areas of interest always amaze me.  His academic history should be a good clue that Dave is one of those guys that loves to learn.  He has degrees in Civil Engineering, Land Surveying, and Mechanical Engineering (but a patent in high performance computing).  What you probably don't know about Dave is that while in college, he helped to make the Bocce Ball Club one of the largest organizations on Michigan Tech's campus (with regular meetings at the B&B Bar, where pickled eggs are a specialty), and he grows wheat in his yard in Ypsilanti.  He and his family are active with the Ypsi Food Coop.

So tonight the topic is technical.  But I think that the breadth of knowledge that Dave brings to any discussion is worth noting, and what makes hanging out with Dave (or attending his talks) fun and interesting.  Dave's one of those guys that you can just sit down and have a conversation with, about pretty much anything.

See you tonight!  All AACS meetings are free and open to the public.  AACS memberships are $20 annually and qualify you for door prizes.

Tonight's AACS meeting will be Ann Arbor SPARK, 330 E. Liberty (lower level).  6:00.  Pizza will be served.  Remember, this is the last meeting for AACS at SPARK.

 

September Ann Arbor Tech Events

Ah, a new month and more tech events in Ann Arbor. All meetings are free and open to the public.  SRT is happy to say that we will be hosting several of these meetings in our new office, at 206 S. Fifth, Suite 200.  That's at the corner of Fifth and Washington, directly above the Linux Box.  Entrance is on Fifth; take the elevator to floor 2R (or you can take the stairs, but then you have to wind around on the 2nd floor to find our office).

Tomorrow, Wednesday September 5, Dave Strenski of Cray Inc., will be presenting a talk for the Ann Arbor Computer Society, entitled "Estimating FPGA 64-bit Floating Point Performance".  For a brief summary on FPGA (Field Gate Programmable Arrays), go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPGA.  Dave will talk about the architecture of the Xilinx Virtec-4 and Virtex-5 FPGA chips, and demonstrate how to estimate their performance.  This meeting will be held at SPARK Central, 330 E. Liberty (lower level) for the last time.  Starting in October, SRT will be hosting the AACS meetings.

On Thursday, September 6, the Michigan Python User Group will talk about "Python 3.0: What's up with that?".  The group will meet at SRT's offices, at 206 S. Fifth Ave, Suite 200 (see directions above).

On Monday, September 10, at UM's North Campus (EECS 1200), the Ruby MI group will meet.  In addition to open discussion, the meeting will include:

  1. User Group Challenge – Boggle
  2. Ruby/Rails Editors lightening talks
  3. RubyConf*MI

 
The Ann Arbor Java User group, which usually meets the first Tuesday of the month, has moved its meeting to next Tuesday,September 11, because of the holiday.  Raj Rajen will be presenting Janeeva's experiences with Flex.  The AAJUG meeting will be held at its longtime location at Washtenaw Community College, Room WCC BE250. 

And finally, the Ann Arbor Dot Net Developer Group (AADND) meets on Wednesday, September 12 for a talk on Windows Workflow (WF) and "Following the Rules", by Michael Wood. AADND will also be meeting at SRT's office, at 206 S. Fifth Ave, Suite 200 (see directions above).