Shogun

TOKYO, SANTA CLARA, CA February 27, 2008 The University of Tokyo and Sun
Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: JAVA) today announced two joint research
projects that will focus on High-Performance Computing (HPC) and
Web-based programming languages. These research projects are a direct
result of the joint development agreement signed in June 2005 to
establish a new university-corporate collaboration model. The research
projects will be the first international collaboration that comes out of
the Proprius21 scheme advocated by the University for producing visible
results from research collaborations with private enterprises.

http://www.madshrimps.be/vbulletin/f...mputing-42359/

Shogun

The two research topics are:

* Development of a library based on skeletal parallel programming in
Fortress

* Implementation of a multiple virtual machine (MVM) environment on
Ruby and JRuby

"We are very pleased to announce the commencement of two research
projects with Sun Microsystems. We believe our close relationship can
create knowledge contributing to both industrial and academic fields,"
said Koichi Yamada, Managing Director of the University of Tokyo.

"We are delighted to be backing the work at the University of Tokyo,
which we expect to help enable a quantum leap in the scaling abilities
of modern Web frameworks like Ruby on Rails," said Jim Parkinson, Vice
President Developer, Tools and Services , Sun Microsystems Inc.

Development of a library based on skeletal parallel programming in
Fortress

A group led by Professor Masato Takeichi and Associate Professor
Zhenjiang Hu at the Graduate School of Information Science and
Technology, the University of Tokyo will collaborate with Dr. Guy Steele
and his team at Sun Labs to develop a library based on skeletal parallel
programming in Fortress (a programming language designed by Sun for
high-performance computing). The collaborative research is expected to
significantly enhance the convenience of parallel programming, and the
results will be disclosed under an OSI-approved license.

Skeletal parallelism is a programming method that uses pre-defined
components (skeletons) extracted from general-purpose parallel
processing constructs to make parallelization process simpler and more
scalable, while shielding programmers from the complexity of parallelism
such as task communication and synchronization. In addition, the use of
constructive algorithmic is being studied to mathematically understand
the structure of programs to facilitate program generation and improve
the efficiency through program transformation.

Fortress is a new programming language being created "to do for Fortran
what Java(TM)-based technologies have done for C" by enabling highly
productive programming constructs. The wide-ranging language constructs
of Fortress and the knowledge gained from the study of skeletal parallel
programming are expected to produce a synergy effect. Once the
theoretical and implementation issues of the programming language are
clearly defined, development of a library will be attempted.

The collaborative research is scheduled to continue until the end of
March 2009. For the first year, Sun will contribute funding to the
research which will be conducted at Sun Labs and at the University of
Tokyo. The University will hire a postdoctoral researcher to conduct the
research.

Implementation of a multiple virtual machine (MVM) environment on Ruby
and JRuby

A group led by Professor Ikuo Takeuchi at the Graduate School of
Information Science and Technology, the University of Tokyo will
collaborate with Sun's Tim Bray (Director of Web Technologies) and the
members of the JRuby team to implement a multiple virtual machine (MVM)
environment on both Ruby and JRuby. The MVM environment is expected to
make Ruby programs run more efficiently than was previously possible.
The results of the research are scheduled to be open sourced via the
broader community of Ruby developers, which could inspire further
innovations.

Previously, running more than one application simultaneously on Ruby
required multiple interpreters, leading to excessive memory consumption.
The proposed MVM environment could generate multiple VM instances on a
single interpreter, allowing applications to run more efficiently. The
collaborative research aims to clarify such technical issues as the
definition of common interfaces for using MVM, parallelization of VM
instances and memory sharing, and then to implement technologies that
can be used on Ruby and JRuby. While Ruby has already been widely in use
in commercial and other environments, the research on MVM will further
enhance the performance and utility of Ruby.

The collaborative research is scheduled to continue until the end of
September 2009. For the first year, Sun will contribute funding to the
research. In addition to the principal researchers from Sun's JRuby team
and Professor Takeuchi's group, various other researchers and
programmers will be invited to join in this research.

For many years, the University of Tokyo and Sun have been collaborating
in IT research in such areas as microprocessors and high-speed
networking. With the inception of the latest collaborative research, the
two organizations are strengthening their relationships even further.
They will explore the possibility of conducting joint R&D into
next-generation technologies in the fields of digital campuses,
e-learning, and computer sciences. Specifically, collaborative research
projects on security, compilers, HPC tools, and mobile technologies will
be contemplated to satisfy the market needs in the near future.