Select a calendar:
Filter May Events by Event Type:
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for May
-
Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Wed, May 04, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Wotao Yin, UCLA
Talk Title: Theory and Applications of Asynchronous Parallel Computing
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: Single-core performance stopped improving around 2005. However, 64 CPU-cores workstations, thousand-core GPUs, and even eight-core cellphones are sold at affordable prices. To take advantages of multiple cores, we must parallelize our algorithms. In order for iterative algorithms to have strong parallel performance, it is important to reduce or even remove synchronizations so that the cores can keep running with the information they have, even when the latest one has not arrived. This talk explains why such async-parallel computing is both theoretically sound and practically attractive. In particular, we study fixed-point iterations of a nonexpansive operator and show that randomized async-parallel iterations will almost surely converge to a fixed point, as long as the operator has a fixed point and the step size is properly chosen. Roughly speaking, the convergence speed scales linearly with the number of cores when the number of cores is no more than the square root of the number of variables. As special cases, novel algorithms for linear equation systems, machine learning, distributed and decentralized optimization are introduced. On sparse logistic regression and others, new async-parallel algorithms run order-of-magnitude faster than the traditional sync-parallel algorithms. This is joint work with Zhimin Peng (UCLA), Yangyang Xu (IMA), and Ming Yan (Michigan State).
Biography: Wotao Yin is a professor in the Department of Mathematics of UCLA. His research interests lie in computational optimization and its applications in image processing, machine learning, and other inverse problems. He received his B.S. in mathematics from Nanjing University in 2001, and then M.S. and Ph.D. in operations research from Columbia University in 2003 and 2006, respectively. During 2006 - 2013, he was with Rice University. He won NSF CAREER award in 2008 and Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 2009. His recent work has been in optimization algorithms for large-scale and distributed signal processing and machine learning problems.
Host: Dr. Mahdi Soltanolkotabi
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Fog: A new architecture for network distributed computation, communication, control and storage
Thu, May 05, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mung Chiang, Princeton University
Talk Title: Fog: A new architecture for network distributed computation, communication, control and storage
Abstract: Fog architecture distributes computation, communication, control and storage closer to end users along the cloud-to-things continuum, promising the potential benefits in cognition, efficiency, agility and latency, and possibly enabling applications in 5G, IoT and big data. This talk overviews the opportunities and challenges in this research area and discusses the emergent industry momentum in fog.
Biography: Mung Chiang is the Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University. His research on networking received the 2013 Alan T. Waterman Award, the highest honor to US young scientists and engineers. His textbook "Networks: Friends, Money and Bytes" and online course reached 250,000 students since 2012. He founded the Princeton EDGE Lab in 2009, which bridges the theory-practice gap in edge networking research by spanning from proofs to prototypes. He co-founded a few startups in mobile, IoT and big data areas and co-founded the Open Fog Consortium. Chiang is the Director of Keller Center for Innovations in Engineering Education at Princeton University and the inaugural Chairman of Princeton Entrepreneurship Council.
Host: Urbashi Mitra, ubli@usc.edu, EEB 536, x04667
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 539
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Communications, Networks & Systems (CommNetS) Seminar
Mon, May 09, 2016 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Afonso Bandeira, MIT and NYU
Talk Title: On solving certain Semidefinite programs with low-rank solutions
Series: CommNetS
Abstract: Semidefinite programming has played an important role in mathematical signal processing, information theory, combinatorial optimization, etc. Although large Semidefinite programs are particularly challenging to solve, the solution one seeks is often low-rank. A now somehwat common approach is to constraint the search to low-rank solutions in the hope of reducing the computational cost. While such an approach can in general create new suboptimal local optima, it appears to work remarkably well in practice. We give the first (proof of concept) guarantee by showing that for a certain relevant semidefinite program this procedure indeed does not produce new local optima, and the global optima can be found.
Biography: Afonso is an Applied Mathematics Instructor at the MIT Math Department, with a half-time postdoctoral position sponsored by Philippe Rigollet. Starting in the Summer of 2016, he is going to join the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics with a joint appointment in the Center for Data Science at NYU.
Host: Prof. Mahdi Soltanolkotabi
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
EE 598 Cyber-Physical Systems Seminar Series
Mon, May 09, 2016 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mohammad Al Faruque, Assistant Professor, University of California, Irvine
Talk Title: Cyber-Physical System Forensics for Cross-Domain Attack Analysis
Abstract: A Cyber-Physical System (CPS) is a cross-domain system integrating sub-systems from multiple domains connected through communication networks. Today, CPSs can be found in security-sensitive areas such as aerospace, automotive, energy, healthcare, manufacturing transportation, entertainment, and consumer appliances. Compared to the traditional information and embedded systems, due to the tight interactions between cyber and physical domains in CPSs, new vulnerabilities emerge from the boundary between cyber and physical domains. This enables new types of "cross-domain attacks" which include the following two concepts: First, observable energy flows from physical domain such as the analog emissions from acoustics, power flow, electromagnetic (EM), thermal, etc. provide the attackers new ways to access the critical information in the cyber domain. We call this types of attack as "Side Channel Attacks." Second, the classic cyber domain attacks on CPS may cause direct physical damage on them. The second types of attack in the scope of this talk will be called "Kinetic Cyber Attack." In the first part of this talk, I will be presenting our recent work on additive manufacturing systems (3D-printers), where we have demonstrated the vulnerability of a 3D-printer to confidentiality attacks. An additive manufacturing system is attacked through observable acoustic analog emissions in this work. See recent articles at Science (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6282/132) and at ACM Communications (http://cacm.acm.org/news/199406-bad-vibrations-uci-researchers-find-security-breach-in-3d-printing-process/fulltext) about our work.
In the second half of the talk, I will discuss the bright side of the tight integration between cyber and physical domains, which may bring about the potential of physics-centric defense mechanisms to shield CPS against attackers. I will present how my group has achieved physical-layer security for V2X communication for an automotive cyber-physical system.
Biography: Mohammad Al Faruque is currently with the University of California Irvine (UCI), where he is a tenure track assistant professor and directing the Cyber-Physical Systems Lab. Prof. Al Faruque served as an Emulex Career Development Chair during October 2012 till July 2015. Before, he was with Siemens Corporate Research and Technology in Princeton, NJ. His current research is focused on system-level design of embedded systems and Cyber-Physical-Systems (CPS) with special interest on model-based design of software-integrated (multi)-physics systems, multi-core systems, CPS security, etc.
Prof. Al Faruque received the 2016 DATE Best Paper Award, the 2015 DAC Best Paper Award, the 2009 ICCAD Best Paper Award, the 2016 NDSS Distinguished Poster Award, the 2008 HiPEAC Paper Award, the 2012 DATE Best IP Award Nomination, the 2005 DAC Best Paper Award Nomination, the EECS Professor of the year 2015-16 Award, the 2015 UCI Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Fostering Undergraduate Research, and the 2015 Hellman Fellow Award. Besides 50+ IEEE/ACM publications in the premier journals and conferences, Prof. Al Faruque holds 4 US patents.
Host: Paul Bogdan
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Understanding and Improving Graph Algorithm Performance
Wed, May 11, 2016 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mr. Scott Beamer, Computer Architecture PhD Candidate/UC Berkeley
Talk Title: Understanding and Improving Graph Algorithm Performance
Abstract: Graph processing is experiencing a renewed surge of interest as applications grow in importance in social networks analysis, recognition and the sciences. Unfortunately, graph algorithms often execute inefficiently on today's hardware platforms. In particular, graph algorithms are often able to simultaneously underutilize a platform's compute throughput and memory bandwidth.
In this talk, I will describe my work to identify these hardware bottlenecks and their causes. By understanding the main factors for graph algorithm performance, we can design hardware better suited for graph algorithms or improve graph algorithm software implementations. Through our characterization work, we find that contrary to the notion that graph algorithms have a random memory access pattern, we find well-tuned parallel graph codes exhibit substantial locality and thus experience a moderately high cache hit rate.
To understand these graph processing bottlenecks and the solutions to them requires a vertically integrated approach, ranging from algorithms with a novel breadth-first search algorithm to architecture with a detailed graph workload characterization. In between, this includes a graph domain-specific language, a performance model, and a benchmark suite. I will conclude the talk with our recent work on reducing memory communication via an algorithmic transformation.
Biography: Scott Beamer is a Computer Architecture PhD candidate at UC Berkeley advised by Krste Asanovic and David Patterson. He is currently investigating how to accelerate graph algorithms through software optimization and hardware specialization. In the past, he looked into how to best use monolithically integrated silicon photonics to create memory interconnects. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a M.S. in Computer Science, both from UC Berkeley.
Host: Professor Sandeep K. Gupta
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.
