Webinar on "Every Bit Counts: Posit Computing”

*Dr. John Gustafson*, will present a webinar on “*Every Bit Counts: Posit Computing*.”

February 19th at 8AM Pacific Time.

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://lbnl.zoom.us/meeting/register/LO9n9QdMRDSWDkslUWz_5A
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Both the HPC and AI communities are increasingly using the /posit/ approach that Gustafson introduced in 2017, which may be the future of technical computing. This is a new way for computers to calculate that saves time, storage, energy, and power by packing more information into every bit than do legacy approaches.Current technical computing is based on acceptance of rounding errors using numerical representations that were invented in 1914, and of sampling errors using an /ad hoc /number format from almost 50 years ago, designed for when transistors were very expensive but electrical power was relatively free. By sticking to an antiquated storage format well into exascale, we are wasting power, energy, storage, bandwidth and programmer effort. We introduce /posit/ format for real numbers that closely match the distribution needed for computing, with more accurate answers within the needed dynamic range.  This is a fresh and mathematical design to engineering goals that allows better answers using fewer bits.

*Dr. John Gustafson* is an applied physicist and mathematician best known as a disruptive thought leader in HPC. He demonstrated scalable massively parallel performance on real applications in 1988, for which he won the inaugural Gordon Bell Award. ‘Gustafson’s Law’ is widely taught in computer science courses. John is currently a Visiting Scholar, Arizona State University and Chief Scientist, Vq Research. He holds applied mathematics degrees from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Iowa State University.