Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques

Abstract

Welcome to PACT 2020! It has been a privilege and an honor to serve as program chair for the 2020 program. Despite the paper submission deadline at the beginning of the pandemic, we had more submissions than last year, which reflects the growth of the PACT community. We were fortunate to be able to assemble a talented and diligent program committee of 36 members from industry and academia, reflecting the geographic, experiences, and gender diversity of our community. We also had 27 External Review Committee members. The following describes the main operational elements and results of the PC operations. Submission and Review Process We received 137 submissions and accepted 35 papers, including eight shepherding papers. Another 11 papers are presented as posters. We followed previous years' successful two-round review and rebuttal processes. In the first round, all the papers were reviewed by at least three reviewers, at least two of whom were program committee members. With the recommendation from HotCRP's automated suggestions, the PC chair manually assigned the papers over a week of the period. On average, 12 papers for each PC member and three papers for ERC members were assigned in Round 1. The authors had opportunities to provide rebuttal in the first reviews. The PC members had a week of online discussion to discuss whether the paper should move to the second round review phase. All the papers that did not get forwarded to the second round got the rejection notification after the first round so that the authors were free to modify and submit their papers to other places. Sixty-one papers out of 137 submissions moved to the second round. All secondround papers received at least two more reviews, and papers that did not have enough experts in the first-round received three more reviews. Again, after the second round of reviews, the authors had another rebuttal opportunity. The PC members had another round of online discussions. The PC members used HotCRP comment features to discuss the paper and tried to reach a consensus during the online discussions. The PC chair monitored the online discussions. PC Meeting The PC meeting was initially scheduled for July 10, 2020, in Atlanta, but due to COVID-19, we moved the PC meeting to a virtual PC meeting. All PC members, except one who had a last-minute personal conflict, attended the entire virtual PC meeting. Twenty-eight papers were accepted online before the PC meeting. Only the papers that could not be resolved by online discussions were discussed in the virtual PC meeting. Due to the time differences (PC members are from Asia, Europe, and North America), we limited the virtual PC meeting to four hours. Instead, the PC members actively discussed the papers before the PC meeting. About 20 papers were discussed in the virtual PC meeting. Organizing a PC meeting virtually had many challenges: confirming PC members' identities, accommodating time differences, efficient handling of PC member conflicts, etc. Due to Zoom's breakout features, handling conflicts during the virtual PC meeting was actually more efficient than in in-person PC meetings. Shepherding The PC identified eight papers to be shepherded to correct or improve facets of the paper. Acceptance was at the discretion of the shepherd representing the reviewers. We are happy to note all the shepherded papers were accepted. We are thankful for the efforts of the shepherds who took the time to advise on revisions, representing all reviewers, and taking the time to review and finally accept the final versions. ACM Student Research Symposium (SRC) We also hosted an ACM Student Research Competition (SRC) as part of the virtual conference. Professor Adwait Jog served as the Selection Committee chair and was responsible for organizing all of the related activities and managing the process. We greatly appreciate his proactive efforts in expanding the scope of PACT activities to include this important engagement of students in our community.