Run Time Reoptimization for Modern Heterogenous Systems
Abstract:
Modern computers are collections of heterogenous components, including GPUs, TPUs, NPUs, FPGAs and other devices that carry out computing tasks but which are not the central CPU. We are proposing novel methods of program compilation, transformation and scheduling that take advantage of the entire system so that computation takes place in the most appropriate place at the most propitious time. Using LLVM IR, optimizers, and a performance aware scheduler, we can maximize utilization while reducing execution times for arbitrary workloads, freeing developers from treating modern computers as if they were fixed function platforms. This research has applications in high performance computing, embedded systems and security due to the centrality of run time program transformation in our system.
Biography:
George likes to say that he, "Works on networking and operating system code for fun and profit." Writing machine code, building hardware and teaching computing since his teens, his first paid programming gig was hacking DBase III code for an insurance company while still in High School. Standing firmly at the intersection of industry and academia and due to his top ranking in the development of open source software, George has worked on research projects with several leading Universities, including the University of Cambridge, University of California at Santa Cruz, and the University of Twente in the Netherlands. He has spent over 30 years producing commercial software for companies such as Wind River Systems, who, along with NASA, put a bit of his code on Mars with each successful landing there since the Pathfinder probe in 1997. He is the author of two leading books on operating systems, the latest co-authored with Marshall Kirk McKusick and Robert N. M. Watson of The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System 2nd Ed. For over twenty years he has been the columnist better known as Kode Vicious, producing the most widely read column in both of ACM's premier flagship magazines, "Queue" and "Communications of the ACM". George has been a FreeBSD committer for nearly 20 years, and has served on the elected Core team which helps manage the overall project.