Princeton
Friday, June 12, 2015 • DC 1302 • 4:30 p.m.
Abstract: Computer systems have faced significant power challenges at many points in their history, but over the past 20 years, these challenges have shifted from mainly being addressed at the devices and circuits level, to their current position as first-order constraints for architects and software developers. Parallelism, heterogeneity, and specialization have been major architecture levers for achieving power efficiency, especially inside smartphones and mobile devices. Unfortunately, they greatly reduce the abstraction value of instruction set architectures, and as a result, they come with increased challenges for software reliability, interoperability, and performance portability. My talk will discuss work both by my own group and by the field overall to address power challenges while meeting performance, reliability and portability goals on platforms from smartphones to data centers.