Northeastern University Planning Grant: I/UCRC for Energy-Smart Electronic Systems

Northeastern University, Boston MA

Investigators

Abstract

Title: Northeastern University Planning Grant: I/UCRC for Energy-Smart Electronic Systems Datacenters are being constructed daily across the United States at an ever-increasing rate. Just in the first half of 2015, 94.8 megawatts of data center environments were constructed. Financial services, technology, social media and healthcare sectors are just a few of the drivers in this rapidly expanding market. Given the ambitious goals of cloud computing providers and exascale supercomputing, power-smart technologies are going to play a key role in order to reach these aggressive computing targets. This project addresses datacenter power usage. This planning grant will create a new I/UCRC Site at Northeastern University, joining the existing I/UCRC Center for Energy-Smart Electronic Systems (ES2). The Northeastern team brings critical research expertise to the existing Center, and leverages the availability of the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computer Center (MGHPCC). The ES2 I/UCRC is committed to engaging women and underrepresented minorities students in research activities associated with the Site through a research coop model, and through a new Research Experiences for Undergraduates program. Datacenters and supercomputing facilities struggle in terms of their effective use of power and cooling resources. The addition of the Northeastern University Site to the existing ES2 Center adds new research capabilities across the computing stack, ranging from low-power mixed signal design to introducing emerging memory technologies into the memory hierarchy, and from leveraging accelerators to power-aware workload scheduling, that can be used to resolve current and future challenges. The new ES2 Site joins the lead institution Binghamton University, as well as Center partners at Villanova University, Georgia Tech and University of Texas at Arlington. The existing Center partners already have established 25 industrial partners in the Center. The addition of Northeastern builds on this success, and positions the Center to expand in a number of areas in a Phase II program. These areas include: i.) memory system design and optimization, ii.) accelerators, both hardware and software, and iii.) power-effective design.