UT ECE professor Andreas Gerstlauer and his co-investigator Professor Robert van de Geijn in Computer Science have been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to study the Algorithm/Architecture Co-Design of Low Power and High Performance Linear Algebra Compute Fabrics.
The abstract for the work reads:
Given that past approaches for increasing compute performance by packing more transistors into a smaller area and increasing clock frequencies are rapidly becoming unsustainable due to power constraints, reducing power consumption while increasing performance is one of the core concerns going forward. It is well-accepted that specialization (designing parts of the processor for a specific task) and heterogeneity (designating different parts of the processor for different tasks) can lead to orders of magnitude improvements in both aspects. However, the question is whether such efficiency can be maintained while providing enough flexibility to implement a broad class of operations. Research under this project addresses this question for the domain of matrix computations, which are at the core of many computational advances, both in scientific high-performance computing as well as in the embedded, mobile or cyber-physical domains.
Observing that the largest benefits can be obtained through specialization at the foundations, this project is aimed at co-designing algorithms and architectures to directly realize basic linear algebra methods in an optimized combination of hardware and software. By designing a specialized Linear Algebra Processor (LAP), it is expected to be possible to achieve one to two orders of magnitude improved efficiencies (as measured in energy per operation) compared to traditional or proposed computer architectures.
Dr. Andreas Gerstlauer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Gerstlauer is co-author on 2 books and more than 45 conference and journal publications. His work was reprinted as one of the most influential contributions of 10 years at the DATE conference. He has presented in numerous conference and industrial tutorials, and he serves on the program committee of major international conferences, such as DAC and DATE.
