<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div>Last call for this distinguished lecture now in 6.12 on the future of CPU architecture!<br><br>B<br><br>Begin forwarded message:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><b>From:</b> Brad Karp <<a href="mailto:B.Karp@cs.ucl.ac.uk">B.Karp@cs.ucl.ac.uk</a>><br><b>Date:</b> February 4, 2014 at 10:26:21 AM GMT<br><b>To:</b> <a href="mailto:research@cs.ucl.ac.uk">research@cs.ucl.ac.uk</a>, nets <<a href="mailto:nets@cs.ucl.ac.uk">nets@cs.ucl.ac.uk</a>>, <a href="mailto:nets-seminars@cs.ucl.ac.uk">nets-seminars@cs.ucl.ac.uk</a><br><b>Cc:</b> Brad Karp <<a href="mailto:B.Karp@cs.ucl.ac.uk">B.Karp@cs.ucl.ac.uk</a>><br><b>Subject:</b> <b>TODAY, 2 PM: UCL CS Distinguished Lecture: Prof Babak Falsafi (EPFL), MPEB 6.12</b><br><br></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><span>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----</span><br><span>Hash: SHA1</span><br><span></span><br><span>Just a reminder about today's Distinguished Lecture by Prof Babak</span><br><span>Falsafi of EPFL (formerly of Carnegie Mellon), renowned computer</span><br><span>architect, who will be speaking on fundamental scaling limitations</span><br><span>facing modern CPUs, and how to continue building faster CPUs despite</span><br><span>these limitations.</span><br><span></span><br><span>2 PM in MPEB 6.12.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Original talk announcement with title, abstract, and bio below.</span><br><span></span><br><span>This is a rare chance to hear about the future of server CPUs from a</span><br><span>leader in the field; his talk will target a general CS audience. All</span><br><span>very welcome to attend!</span><br><span></span><br><span>- -Brad, <a href="mailto:bkarp@cs.ucl.ac.uk">bkarp@cs.ucl.ac.uk</a></span><br><span></span><br><span>- -------- Original Message --------</span><br><span>Subject: UCL CS Distinguished Lecture: Prof Babak Falsafi (EPFL), Tue</span><br><span>4 Feb, 2 PM, MPEB 6.12</span><br><span>Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2014 02:47:47 +0000</span><br><span>From: Brad Karp <<a href="mailto:B.Karp@cs.ucl.ac.uk">B.Karp@cs.ucl.ac.uk</a>></span><br><span>To: <a href="mailto:research@cs.ucl.ac.uk">research@cs.ucl.ac.uk</a>, <a href="mailto:nets@cs.ucl.ac.uk">nets@cs.ucl.ac.uk</a>, <a href="mailto:nets-seminars@cs.ucl.ac.uk">nets-seminars@cs.ucl.ac.uk</a></span><br><span>CC: Brad Karp <<a href="mailto:B.Karp@cs.ucl.ac.uk">B.Karp@cs.ucl.ac.uk</a>></span><br><span></span><br><span>Greetings, everyone.</span><br><span></span><br><span>It's my pleasure to announce a talk by Prof Babak Falsafi of EPFL</span><br><span>(formerly of CMU), renowned computer architect. Babak will speak in</span><br><span>MPEB 6.12 at 2 PM on Tuesday, the 4th of February.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Let me emphasize that no matter the area of CS you work in, this is a</span><br><span>talk you should find relevant and interesting.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Computer architecture is hugely important to the work of practically</span><br><span>every computer scientist, as it dictates what the CPUs we all use look</span><br><span>like (and thus what algorithms need to look like). For decades,</span><br><span>computer architects devised ingenious techniques for increasing CPU</span><br><span>clock speeds and extracting ever greater performance from the same</span><br><span>sequential programs. They then determined that clock speed increases</span><br><span>could not be sustained any longer because of fundamental limits on</span><br><span>heat dissipation. Thus began the era of multi-core CPUs, which offer</span><br><span>increased parallelism, but not clock-rate increases. That shift has</span><br><span>required rethinking algorithms and data structures, compilers, OS</span><br><span>kernels, memory consistency models, and even debugging and testing,</span><br><span>among other areas.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Babak will speak on the next round of scaling limitations that future</span><br><span>server-class CPUs will encounter, and how those limitations will</span><br><span>change the way CPUs look, including his own creative work on how to</span><br><span>ensure that future CPUs continue to offer performance increases</span><br><span>despite these limitations.</span><br><span></span><br><span>He will target his talk to a general CS audience--he will not be</span><br><span>assuming specialist knowledge of computer architecture.</span><br><span></span><br><span>All very strongly encouraged to attend. Again, this a topic that</span><br><span>undergirds what all of us do!</span><br><span></span><br><span>Title, abstract, and bio follow.</span><br><span></span><br><span>- -Brad, <a href="mailto:bkarp@cs.ucl.ac.uk">bkarp@cs.ucl.ac.uk</a></span><br><span></span><br><span>- ---------</span><br><span></span><br><span>UCL CS Distinguished Lecture</span><br><span></span><br><span>Speaker:</span><br><span></span><br><span> Babak Falsafi</span><br><span> Professor of Computer and Communication Sciences</span><br><span> Director, EcoCloud Research Center</span><br><span> EPFL School of Computer and Communication Sciences</span><br><span></span><br><span>Title:</span><br><span></span><br><span> Big Data and Dark Silicon: Taming Two IT Inflection Points on a</span><br><span>Collision Course</span><br><span></span><br><span>Time and place:</span><br><span></span><br><span> 4th February 2014, 2 PM, MPEB 6.12</span><br><span></span><br><span>Abstract:</span><br><span></span><br><span>Information technology is now an indispensable pillar of a modern-day</span><br><span>society, thanks to the proliferation of digital platforms in the past</span><br><span>several decades. We are now witnessing two inflection points, however,</span><br><span>that are about to change IT as we know it. First, we are entering the</span><br><span>Big Data era where demand for robust and economical data processing,</span><br><span>communication and storage is growing faster than technology can</span><br><span>sustain. Second, while forecasts indicate that chip density scaling</span><br><span>will continue for another decade, the diminishing returns in supply</span><br><span>voltage scaling and the impending "energy wall" are leading server</span><br><span>designers towards energy-centric solutions, and ultimately Dark</span><br><span>Silicon. In this talk, I will motivate these two IT trends and present</span><br><span>promising research avenues for server chip design including</span><br><span>specialized scale-out processors, on-chip networks and die-stacked</span><br><span>DRAM cache hierarchies.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Bio:</span><br><span></span><br><span>Babak is Professor in the School of Computer and Communication</span><br><span>Sciences and the founding director of the EcoCloud research center</span><br><span>pioneering future energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly cloud</span><br><span>technologies at EPFL. He has made numerous contributions to computer</span><br><span>system design and evaluation including a scalable multiprocessor</span><br><span>architecture which was prototyped by Sun Microsystems (now Oracle),</span><br><span>snoop filters and temporal stream prefetchers that are incorporated</span><br><span>into IBM BlueGene/P and BlueGene/Q, and computer system simulation</span><br><span>sampling methodologies that have been in use by AMD and HP for</span><br><span>research and product development. His most notable contribution has</span><br><span>been to be first to show that contrary to conventional wisdom,</span><br><span>multiprocessor memory programming models -- known as memory</span><br><span>consistency models -- prevalent in all modern systems are neither</span><br><span>necessary nor sufficient to achieve high performance. He is a</span><br><span>recipient of an NSF CAREER award, IBM Faculty Partnership Awards, and</span><br><span>an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. He is a fellow of IEEE.</span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----</span><br><span>Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (FreeBSD)</span><br><span>Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - <a href="http://www.enigmail.net/">http://www.enigmail.net/</a></span><br><span></span><br><span>iEYEARECAAYFAlLwwE0ACgkQNz6hPDTA3IEmNACfcJeh6G1urdjFafbL5n7Q8A4J</span><br><span>ovUAn1vphaZHEfR6vsG/aBFN7eTzehbz</span><br><span>=j2Ah</span><br><span>-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----</span><br></div></blockquote></body></html>