PACT

It has been my honor to serve as General Chair for PACT'2006. We have an exciting program and a wonderful venue in Seattle, and we hope that you will be able to partake of some of what the city has to offer.Our Program Chairs, Kevin Skadron and Ben Zorn, and their Program Committee have put together a strong program of technical papers. We also are also pleased to offer three keynote addresses.Our Workshops Chair, Albert Cohen, and our Tutorials Chair, Sandhya Dwarkadas also put together strong offerings, with four workshops and five tutorials on a variety of topics likely to be of interest to PACT attendees.Seattle is a beautiful and vibrant city. The surrounding area offers a wealth of scenic beauty and natural attractions, and we encourage you to avail yourself of some of these when time permits. Seattle's natural wonders include beautiful Puget Sound, the Olympic Peninsula, the Cascade Mountains, and Mount Rainier. Seattle is also a tremendous cultural center, with world class dining, music, and the arts. Seattle is center of high-tech industry, and we will have an opportunity to see that industry first-hand, during our excursion to the Boeing wide-body assembly plant in Everett, Washington. Our Local Arrangements Chair, Trishul Chilimbi, has worked hard to arrange this visit, and to ensure that the conference facilities matched the high quality of the program. I thank the Steering Committee for their support for holding PACT in Seattle and their many points of guidance.Sony has also been provided strong support to PACT, and will sponsor Tuesday's lunch. We also appreciate the support of CA (Computer Associates) for their support of the Tuesday evening reception. Microsoft and IBM have also continued their longstanding support for PACT.Our Finance Chair, Lixin Zhang, has done in excellent job in making handling our funds, and our Registration Chair, Michael Gschwind, has likewise done an excellent job in both developing and running the registration process.