anacron

Thanks Amogh and thanks everyone for the great advice.

Thanks for the great advice BKMD. You're definitely right about looking for prospective advisors instead of just the school rankings. On a related note, do you guys think its good to get into contact with potential advisors - now? The reason I ask is, I will be at UIUC for the summer and there are a few professors who are active in my area of research. So it would be a great opportunity to chat and see if our interests are similar.

Those are some very good points that you brought up and ones we are taking into account with our model. There are certainly disadvantages in using a cloud especially with the network being a bottleneck and the overhead of maintaining the virtualized infrastructure (via Open Nebula, etc.) However, with specialized supercomputers you have the big problem of scalability, even though it offers higher throughput there is a drawback to how many CPU's, processes, etc. that are available. If the supercomputer is simply for your own use, then yes, there would be no justification for a cloud. However, if you consider various applications such as Blast, GROMACS, MM5 which can (and are) used by a big sector of the scientific community then scalability and availability are big problems. Supercomputers have long waiting lists and you often cannot use its entire computing power. This is another reason why I wanted to get into Cloud b/c there are a lot of challenging problems (scheduling, networking, load-balancing, federation). I'm curious, what are your research interests in HPC? What I said, on second thought, might be a little confusing since I talk about supercomputers and not grids. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that the research I'm doing is geared towards seeing if HPC applications are affected by virtualization technologies, some grids do leverage virtualization which is why I did not want to generalize. Thanks, newms! You're right about the research, I really should target schools known for their presence in Cloud and HPC since I know what I'm really interested in.

That is exactly the topic I will be addressing with my senior thesis actually. Whether there is an appreciable difference in communication costs on a virtualized environment versus dedicated high performance clusters. (i.e Supercomputers). With network speeds increasing (infiniband, Gigabits/s scale switches) there could be a compelling reason to use Clouds due to their high availability, low maintenance and competitive costs. Gauging the performance of HPC applications can help to highlight problems and potential fixes. There's a lot of potential with clouds and HPC should be the ideal target to measure the performance of a cloud.

Thanks a lot adinutz! I'll keep that in mind regarding the SOPs and GREs. Congrats on the WashU admit and good luck with the PhD. this is probably off topic, but, are there people in the forum doing Cloud/HPC? I would love to hear which colleges they shortlisted and perhaps talk about some research topics

Although it is true that I didnt specify which journal or its prestige would this really make the difference with addcomms? But, if it maybe of use, we submitted to the Journal of Computer Systems Science and the first author paper is targeted at IEEE Computer. The research proposal was my idea and will lead towards another first author paper if we make substantial progress as well as contribute towards my senior thesis, its scope is comparable to an MS thesis and I will be working towards that target. My advisors were very excited about the proposal and I will be working on it starting the fall term. I have worked closely with both of my advisors, taken classes with them and have regular contact with them. They are the main reason why I have gained a lot of good opportunities for this summer. Out of which I am choosing to do the UIUC REU. The poster presentation was a default at the REU, The PI and I have not discussed projects yet. (they are still sending out acceptances) I would like to present the work at a conference etc. but that would depend on the scope/novelty of the project given the 10-week deadline. Regarding top schools: UIUC is a major one since they made good contributions in Cloud computing including Open Cirrus. Stanford for their work with the Magellan testbed Berkeley, RAD Labs U Washington U Texas Austin Several safety schools On a side note, the reason for journal publications are because my advisor needs more journals. I have no problems with conferences if my advisors are ok. After all I am an undergrad and will have 5-6yrs of PhD to publish to conferences My advisors have not pushed me to "swab the decks" etc and have let me have complete freedom with my projects. (except for the JCSS paper which was my first contribution and I did not have the background knowledge at the time). Hopefully this gives a better idea? I would love to hear your thoughts.

I will be applying for admission into the Fall 2012 cycle. The actual applications will be submitted this November/December (i.e. Fall 2011). Thanks for replying! I will be taking my GRE's this summer and am not too worried about the scores. I feel that I have shown my capabilities with my research and publications. Of course, I don't plan on bombing on the tests either

Hey guys, I'm going to be applying for PhD programs during Fall 2011 and I just wanted to get your opinions on where my profile stands. A little background, I am double majoring in Computer Science and Computer Engineering. My research interests are in Cloud and High-Perf. Computing. Here are some key statistics: Cum. GPA : 3.86/4.00 Major GPA's : have not calculated the exact numbers but definitely at or above 3.9. Research: Currently working on the performance evaluation of high performance computing applications in virtualized environments. Will be submitting a project proposal to use the Magellan cloud testbed at NERSC Lawrence Berkeley lab. This will go towards my senior thesis as well as a journal paper around January. Recently admitted to UIUC's summer REU and will spend this summer working on a research project culminating in a poster presentation. Publications: One paper submitted to a journal, should receive decision soon(Invited, peer-reviewed journal). I am currently working on another paper which would be a first author paper. LoRs: 2 from my research advisors, one of whom is quite well known in High-Perf Computing. I have worked with both for all of my research projects and have done well in classes they were teaching. Hopefully 1 more from the PI at the UIUC REU and the 4th(for fellowships) from my school's undergraduate director. Awards: Dean's list, scholarships, academic related awards. etc. Others: Teaching assistant for an intro. CS class. Teaching assistant for an electrical engineering class at John's Hopkins summer program Math Tutoring It would be great if you guys could give me some advise on where I could apply and if I should skew my list toward the Top 20 or keep more safety schools.