Summer of Code Contest Encourages Java Programming in Parallel Environments

FastMPJ Summer of Code 2012 is a contest organized by the FastMPJ project that intends to encourage Java programming in parallel environments by a competition in which contestants must develop a project using Message Passing in Java (MPJ) with FastMPJ. FastMPJ is a high performance Java message passing library developed at the Computer Architecture Group of the University of A Corunna, Spain, and supported by the Investment Fund in Science of the Fundación Barrié that enables Java for high performance computing. 

The aim of this contest is to make the use of Java visible in optimized high performance environments and as a means to improve performance of sequential codes. Nevertheless, no previous experience, either in Java nor in MPJ or MPI, is required to enter the contest, since one of the goals is to have people learning the characteristics of this kind of programming. For this reason, documentation is available at http://fastmpj.com/documentation.

Works must be hosted as Google Code projects and can consist of any kind of project that uses MPJ.

“Java programming is widely used in industry and academia, but it is commonly (and wrongly) thought as not being suitable for environments in which performance is crucial. This Summer of Code is intended towards everyone who is eager to learn in which way Java can improve our applications performance and how to program in parallel using Java. Winning the prize is encouraging, but the most important goal of each contestant must be learning,” says Sabela Ramos, the director of this FastMPJ Summer of Code 2012.

Up to 60 participants will be able to prove their abilities in this field, and the best projects (at least 5 percent) will be awarded with a Nexus 7 tablet, although every participant will get a FastMPJ T-Shirt. Registration is open until July 13 at http://fastmpj.com/soc, where you can also find the contest rules.