Central Operations
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Central Operations is the administrative arm of the Gelato Federation and is charged with assisting Gelato's mission of advancing Linux on Itanium. Central Operations reaches this objective by:
- Nurturing a mature, dynamic community that values the open exchange of ideas and solutions
- Developing and promoting technically-rich meetings
- Catalyzing critical collaborative relations
- Encouraging the development and dissemination of Itanium-specific, open-source solutions
- Establishing a rich repository of Itanium specific knowledge
- Recruiting quality Members and Sponsors
- Promoting awareness about the Gelato Federation, its mission, and its Members' work to the greater HPC community
At the Federation's kickoff meeting in February 2002, it was decided that Gelato's Managing Director and Central Operations staff should reside at one of the Founding Gelato Members' institutions, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), under the direction of Professor Wen-mei Hwu. Professor Hwu was instrumental in the establishment of Gelato Central Operations at UIUC and currently serves on the Gelato Executive Steering Committee. The offices of Gelato Central Operations are housed within the Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL) of the College of Engineering at UIUC.
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People | Mark K. Smith - Gelato Leader | 
| Mark K. Smith is the Managing Director of the Gelato Federation. He works with Federation members and sponsors around the world, fostering collaborative relationships among members, sponsors, and the general community to advance the Linux-Itanium platform. Mark leads a technical team at University of Illinois and dedicates time to educating the general community about the advantages of the platform. Prior to joining Gelato, he worked in the software industry for 10 years. Mark holds a PhD in Engineering from the University of Illinois. |
| Andrew Schuh | 
| Andrew Schuh was born in Atlanta, Georgia and graduated from Asbury College in Kentucky with a BS in Math Secondary Education. From 1989-2001, he taught, was an elementary school principal, and then finally the Chief Administrative Officer at a private school in Champaign, Illinois. Schuh is currently finishing an MS in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the Operations Manager for Gelato Central Operations where he coordinates Federation meetings, writes articles, and helps develop Gelato's quality presence at trade shows. |
| Nan Holda | 
| Nan Holda is the Communications and Web Development Specialist for Gelato. Her main responsibilities include: overseeing portal development, keeping the portal up-to-date regarding Linux Itanium news and Federation Members' activities, assisting Federation marketing strategies, and conference exhibition and meeting coordination. Nan formerly worked at SourceGear Corporation as a Technical Support and Marketing Specialist for their version control software. She is a freelance journalist for several local newspapers, and is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).
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| Matthieu Delahaye | 
| Although Matthieu Delahaye has worked on the Gelato portal since its creation in 2002, he officially joined Gelato Central Operations as a Software Engineer in August 2004. In addition to maintaining the Gelato portal, Matthieu works on Gelato Coconut, Gelato Vanilla, and other challenging infrastructure and development projects around the Itanium processor. Matthieu made his first kernel hacks while involved in the parisc-linux port effort, and then joined the Debian Project. At the same time, he received an MS in Computer Science from ESIEE, where he subsequently worked for two years in the IT Department. |
The mission of the Gelato portal is to aid the Gelato Federation in advancing the Linux Itanium platform. To accomplish this, www.gelato.org provides the Linux Itanium community with the most current and useful resources. More specifically, the portal strives to:
- Be the place people go for information on Linux on Itanium, with up-to-date information about events, developments, projects, and software releases.
- Support the vibrant and open Gelato community where visitors, Members, and Sponsors can interact, share information, and notify each other of their Itanium work and experiences.
- Create a central repository for details about all Gelato Federation news, including information about its diverse and globally-dispersed Members and their activities.
- Promote the Gelato Federation in order to inform visitors about Gelato and attract new Members and Sponsors.
Gelato Central Operations hopes you find the portal to be a user-friendly, technically-rich resource. Much of the portal's content and functionality that you see today have been implemented from users' requests. If you have any feedback or suggestions for the portal, please send a message to webmaster@gelato.org.
Facilities
The Gelato portal is hosted at the Coordinated Science Laboratory of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. |
Problem Definition
It is not enough to have a clearly articulated and effectively executed mission if people do not know you exist. To this end, Gelato actively evangelizes the Linux Itanium platform through a visible role in the HPC community.
Approach
Through participation at tradeshows, conferences, and meetings, Gelato Central Operations works to raise the Linux Itanium community's awareness of the Gelato Federation. In addition, Gelato-specific "Birds of a Feather" events—focused sessions organized by various tradeshows—allow an opportunity for prospective members, sponsors, and other interested parties to meet current members and sponsors and to receive vital updates on the Federation.
Results
Community awareness about Gelato is steadily increasing. Since the Federation's inception in 2002, membership has grown from seven to nearly 40 institutions. HP was Gelato's Founding Sponsor. Since that time, Gelato has added two additional quality sponsors—Intel and SGI. Much of this growth can be attributed to Gelato's presence at tradeshows and conferences.
Looking Ahead
Gelato Central Operations expects the future to be a busy and fruitful in terms of raising awareness about the Gelato Federation. Planned tradeshow/conference attendance includes: HPC Asia, Intel Developers Forums, International Supercomputer Conference, and SuperComputing. Also planned are two semiannual Federation meetings held around the globe at rotating Member and Sponsor locations.
Overview
Gelato has partnered with the Free Standards Group (FSG), in the interest of maintaining and promoting Linux standards. When possible, Gelato Central Operations will release binaries that are LSB compliant, and we will assist and encourage other members to do the same.
Linux Standard Base Web Site: http://www.linuxbase.org/
Current Staus/Looking Ahead
Gelato Central Operations has released LSB-compliant Eclipse binaries for both versions 2.0.1 and 3.0. We are also involved in a new project which will produce high-performance IA-64/Linux LSB-compliant packages that are built with specialized, cutting-edge compilers.
Gelato Central Operations has also been involved in efforts to evangelize the LSB by offering both lectures and one-on-one assistance to other members who are interested in releasing LSB-compliant packages. By helping to build awareness of the benefits of the LSB, we stimulate demand for LSB compliance from both users and developers.
We strive to keep up with the latest LSB tools and changes, and submit bug reports back to the FSG when appropriate.
Overview
Gelato Central Operations has ported the Eclipse IDE to the Itanium platform, and we have taken on the responsibility of building IA-64 binaries for snapshots and releases. This project began with Eclipse 2.0.1, and continues through the 3.x series.
Technical Approach
We have gathered a considerable amount of existing work on 64-bit Eclipse ports, made several addition fix-ups, and integrated it into a package that is ready for the end-user. We have set up a dedicated server which will provide builds for the Eclipse Foundation on a regular basis.
Current Staus/Looking Ahead
We have produced unofficial but complete IA-64 releases for Eclipse 2.0.1 and Eclipse 3.0. Our work will be a part of the official Eclipse distribution starting in version 3.1. We are collaborating with several other entities that are bringing other critical elements, such as a 64-bit clean Eclipse CDT, to the IA-64 platform.
We are also working on performance monitoring visualization tools, which eventually will be implemented as an Eclipse plug-in.
Overview/Problem Definition
By design, the Itanium processor depends on the compiler to create highly optimized code. Of course, gcc is the orthodox choice for a compiler on the Linux platform. Unfortunately, while thorough in its scope, the optimizations available through gcc do not begin to compare with compilers like Intel's® C++ compiler (icc), particularly on the Itanium.
Project Homepage: http://www.co.gelato.org/vanilla/
This site exists to make available highly optimized binaries for critical Linux utilities on the Linux Itanium platform and to give developers compiler tips to create efficient binaries. The Vanilla Project is partially funded by the Intel Compiler Lab.
Technical Approach
Open Source
Unless otherwise stated, the Vanilla Project distributes only open-source software. Open-source software is critical as this allows Gelato to compile using different compilers and compiler options. In addition, open-source software allows the Vanilla Project team to modify the code as necessary for the purpose of creating LSB-compliant packages (see Distribution Agnostic).
Documentation
Documentation is a critical part of this project. The intent is to give insight into the different compiler options and when best to apply them. With each binary, details of compiler options used will be documented as well as the option definitions. Sharing the compiler options used will allow the user to compile the source themselves (assuming they have access to the same compiler we used).
Distribution Agnostic
Another important aspect of this project is to make binaries which will run on any distribution. To this end, the Vanilla Project provides LSB-compliant binaries. The user will need an LSB-compliant or certified Linux distribution. RedHat, Debian, Suse, and RedHat rebuilds are all valid distributions.
Results
Results coming soon.
Current Staus/Looking Ahead
In addition to several smaller packages, Gelato Central Operations is currently focusing on PostgreSQL, Perl, PHP, and Python.
Software Used
 Intel® C++ Compiler 8.1 (icc)
gcc 3.3
OpenIMPACT Compiler (oicc)
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