Keynote: Architecture and software for emerging low-power systems

Abstract

We have been experiencing two very important developments in computing. On the one hand, a tremendous amount of resources have been invested into innovative applications such as first-principle based models, deep learning and cognitive computing. On the other hand, the industry has been taking a technological path where application performance and power efficiency vary by more than two orders of magnitude depending on their parallelism, heterogeneity, and locality. We envision a “perfect storm” is coming for future computing resulting from the fact that data movement has become the dominating factor for both power and performance of high-valued applications. It will be critical to match the compute throughput to the data access bandwidth and to locate the compute at where the data is. Much has been and continuously needs to be learned about of algorithms, languages, compilers and hardware architecture in this movement. What are the killer applications that may become the new diver for future technology development? How hard is it to program existing systems to address the date movement issues today? How will we program these systems in the future? How will innovations in memory devices present further opportunities and challenges in designing new systems? What is the impact on long-term software engineering cost on applications (and legacy applications in particular)? In this talk, I will present some lessons learned as we design the IBM-Illinois C3SR Erudite system inside this perfect storm.