Ruggero Caravita

openlab Summer Student, IT/DI, from 20/06/11 to 12/08/11

 I got my graduation in physics on 2010 at Università degli Studi di Milano, and I'm currently following my master studying particle physics in the same University. Aside physics, I have been having a really long term interest in computer science and specifically in graphic video devices since first years of high school, self-learning this new way of programming with a close friend currently student at Politecnio di Milano, Andrea Bartezzaghi. Together we took our first experiments in general purpose GPU programming, at the time only in assembly with Shader Model 1.0. This long term interest pushed me in the direction of CUDA (in my bachelor thesis) and parallel programming techniques, that finally lead to the openlab project I worked on: increasing performance of the parallel ROOT fit package prototype (called MLFit) by adding MPI support. The project also includes tests on different hardware (from a single node to a small cluster) and a detailed study of a new research chip from IntelCorporation: Single-chip Cloud Computer (SCC).