SIGMICRO Annual Report

July 2002 - June 2003
Submitted by: Kemal Ebcioglu , Chair

SIGMICRO GOALS

Our objectives for SIGMICRO continue to be:

• Making quality improvements to the Annual International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO), the flagship conference of SIGMICRO

• Adding new high quality conferences to SIGMICRO's portfolio

• Becoming a Web resource, for teaching and research fields related to microarchitecture

• Establishing new student awards, to foster interest in leading edge microarchitecture research

• Providing computing research resources to microarchitecture researchers worldwide, with the help of the industry.

This fiscal year's report focuses on our expanding conference series, and also describes our ongoing efforts toward our other goals.

SIGMICRO CONFERENCE ACTIVITIES

SIGMICRO is aiming to expand its conference portfolio with new high quality conferences. We have gone from 1 conference (MICRO) to 4 conferences recently (MICRO, CASES, CGO, CF).

MICRO-36: SIGMICRO's flagship conference, the International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO-36), will be held from December 2 to 5, 2003 in San Diego, California (http://www.microarch.org/micro36). 134 papers were submitted and 35 were accepted. This year, the organizers have again allowed author rebuttals to reviews, as in MICRO-34 and MICRO-35, with the help of the web-based MICRO paper review software. The general chair is Bill Mangione-Smith (UCLA) and the program committee chair is Brad Calder (UCSD).

MICRO-35: The attendees of MICRO-35 (http://www.microarch.org/micro35) had a great time in Istanbul, Turkey, from November 18 to 22, 2002. Total attendance reached 213, despite the global difficulties during that time period. MICRO-35 received support from 11 different organizations, and featured outstanding keynote speakers (Tilak Agerwala, Vice President of Systems at IBM Research, and Justin Rattner, Intel Fellow and Director of Microprocessor Research). We created a new "Student Advocate" position among the conference officers, to ensure that students were well-represented in all aspects of the conference. Many student paper awards, a record amount of travel grants were given. 150 papers were submitted (a record for MICRO), and 36 were accepted. MICRO-35 also resulted in a good surplus. The general chair was Kemal Ebcioglu (IBM) and the program committee co-chairs were Scott Mahlke (U. of Michigan) and Bob Rau (HP).

CGO 2003: SIGMICRO has co-sponsored a new conference, the Annual International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization (CGO 2003, http://www.cgo.org), which was held from March 23 to 26, 2003 in San Francisco. The program chair was Wen-Mei Hwu (U. of Illinois), and the general co-chairs were Tom Conte (NCSU) and Richard Johnson (Transmeta). Total attendance reached 155, exceeding expectations for this first conference in the series. CGO-2004 will be held again in the Bay area, in March 2004.

CASES 2003: SIGMICRO is co-sponsoring the International Conference on Compilers, Architecture and Synthesis on Embedded Systems (CASES 2003, http://www.casesconference.org), which will take place from October 30 to November 1, 2003 in San Jose, California. CASES 2003 received 161 submissions, higher than in prior years, which is a testament to the growing interest in the field. 31 papers were accepted, establishing CASES 2003 as a high quality conference. The general co-chairs are Jaime Moreno (IBM) and Praveen Murthy (Fujitsu), and the program committee co-chairs are Tom Conte (NCSU) and Paolo Faraboschi (HP).

Computing Frontiers: SIGMICRO is launching another new international conference, Computing Frontiers (CF'04, http://www.computingfrontiers.org), which will be held in Ischia, Italy, from April 14 to 16, 2004. The conference focuses on novel, leading edge computing techniques. The program chairs are Jean Luc Gaudiot (UC Irvine, USA) and Vincenzo Piuri (U. of Milan, Italy) and the general chair is Stamatis Vassiliadis (U. of Delft, Netherlands).

SPONSORED RESEARCH PROGRAM

SIGMICRO is continuing to provide free online access to IA-64 and S/390 machines to researchers and educators. More details are on our web page www.acm.org/sigmicro.

AWARDS

SIGMICRO and IEEE-TCuARCH are working toward establishing a new award in the name of Bob Rau, a very distinguished researcher from the MICRO community (and ACM/IEEE Eckert-Mauchly award winner for 2002), who passed away in December 2002.

ACCESS TO ACM DIGITAL LIBRARY

We have ensured that being a SIGMICRO member now gives privileges to access all the past proceedings of MICRO since 1973, at the ACM Digital Library. The MICRO proceedings are quite a treasure.

CHANGE OF MICRO PROCEEDINGS SHIPMENT METHOD

This year, as a result of a decision made in MICRO-34 business meeting in Austin Texas, to counter the recent financial pressures, we have chosen to send a CD-ROM for the MICRO-35 and CGO conference proceedings, with the hard-copy of the MICRO-35 proceedings being available for those members who request it.

SIGMICRO GRANT

SIGMICRO received a grant of $20000 from the ACM SIG Governing board to be used specifically for various projects being planned. More information will be provided as the implementation of the projects goes forward.

CURRENT SIGMICRO TEAM

Our secretary/treasurer Linda Kovacs has retired as of fall 2002, and Ed Gehringer from North Carolina State University has been appointed as the new SIGMICRO secretary/treasurer. SIGMICRO has also increased its staffing by appointing new directors for various fields, in order to meet its objectives with the right team. The current SIGMICRO personnel consists of:

• Chair: Kemal Ebcioglu, IBM

• Vice-Chair: Steve Beaty, Metro State College of Denver

• Secretary/Treasurer: Ed Gehringer, North Carolina State University

• Lizy John, University of Texas at Austin, Director of Public Relations

• David Kaeli, Northeastern University, Director of Awards

• Sally McKee, Cornell University, Director of Sponsored Research

• Jose Fortes, University of Florida, Director of Web Resources

NEAR TERM CHALLENGES

SIGMICRO is very active, but has been having financial challenges recently, because the ACM allocations increased for SIGs, and because MICRO-33 did not create a surplus. The SGB grant, the increased revenue from conferences, the changes in our proceedings shipment method, and new revenues from the ACM Digital Library will likely go a long way toward meeting these financial challenges.

We are continuing our recruiting efforts, to meet staffing challenges for implementing our additional planned projects.