News

Thursday Extra: 3D computer graphics and universal supercomputers

On Thursday, February 11, Professor Steve Cunningham will discuss the past, present, and future of computer graphics and graphics processors:

3D computer graphics is an enormous consumer of computing resources, and the market has responded to the continuing growth in demand for high-performance graphics by creating continually more powerful graphics processors. We will trace these parallel paths from the point where 3D graphics began to replace 2D graphics to the near-future state of 3D graphics, and show how the graphics processor is leading us to having usable laptop and desktop supercomputers.

Steve Cunningham is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at California State University, Stanislaus, and a past chair and president of the Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics of the Association for Computing Machinery. His most recent book, Graphics shaders: theory and practice (with Mike Bailey), was published last year by AK Peters.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). Professor Cunningham's talk, 3D computer graphics and universal supercomputers, will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821.

CS Table: Pair programming

At noon on Friday, February 5, 2010, Computer Science table will consider the topic of pair programming. Our reading will be

Wray, Stewart (2010). How Pair Programming Really Works. IEEE Software 27(1), pp. 50-55. Available online at http://www.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/ComputingNow/homepage/2010/0110/W_SW_PairProgramming.pdf.

Grinnell College's CS Table is a weekly gathering of folks on campus (students, faculty, staff, alums, etc.) to talk about issues relating to computer science. CS Table meets each Friday at noon in Rosenfield 224A. All are welcome, although computer science students and faculty are particularly encouraged to attend.

The spring 2010 theme of CS Table is software design.

How to reach us

telephone: (641) 269-3169
fax: (641) 269-4984

US mail:
Department of Computer Science
Grinnell College
Grinnell, Iowa 50112-1690

private delivery services:
1116 Eighth Avenue
Grinnell, Iowa 50112