[OxLUG Announce] 3 talks - Primes, Screensavers, Supercomputing

[Alasdair G Kergon]

Firstly, there are a couple of computing talks in Oxford this week 
some of you might be interested in attending:

  This Tuesday (25th Nov) Richard Brent is speaking on Primality
  Testing, and in particular about the new test which hit the
  headlines last year (the first deterministic polynomial-time
  primality test).  http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/news/primality.html

  For many years mathematicians have searched for a fast and reliable
  primality test. This is especially relevant nowadays, as the RSA
  public-key cryptosystem requires very large primes in order to
  generate secure keys.  Recently Agrawal, Kayal and Saxena found a
  deterministic polynomial-time primality test.  Their algorithm will
  be described, some improvements by Bernstein and Lenstra will be
  mentioned, and why this is not the end of the story will be
  explained.

  8.15pm, Maths Institute, St. Giles (Keble Rd corner).
  Cost GBP 2 incl. refreshments.
  Organised by OU Invariant Society

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The Screensaver, Lifesaver Project
  Professor W. Graham Richards CBE
  Chairman of Chemistry, University of Oxford
  Wednesday 26th November, 8.15pm

  Over 2 million Personal Computers from over 200 countries are being
  harnessed to screen a database of some billions of small molecules
  as potential drugs. The grid project provides an effective 100
  teraflop machine which is more powerful than the biggest super
  computer. An added bonus has been the involvement of the general
  public in a real scientific project.

  Inorganic Chemistry Lab, South Parks Rd.
    http://users.ox.ac.uk/~science/sci_map.gif
  Cost GBP 1 incl. refreshments.
  Organised by OU Scientific Society

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Finally, our monthly OxLUG meeting on Sunday 7th December
Linux Supercomputing in Oxford - Dr Jon Lockley

  The Oxford Supercomputing Centre (OSC) is a central resource for
  Oxford academics in need of high performance computing. The OSC's
  clustering hardware and software will be described and used to
  illustrate design decisions for clusters. Finally I'll outline what
  impact we expect the new 64bit chipsets and the 2.6 kernel may have
  for high performance computing.

Comlab, 6.30pm
http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/oucl/about/directions.html
Free.
 
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Advance notice:
  Sunday 1st February 2004 - Dick Morrell
    A talk on Linux Device Creation and also consolidation of Linux
    vendors and the muddled path ahead. 

We're still seeking ideas for January's meeting, Sun 4th Jan.