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Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for May
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Demystifying Ultra-Low Power VLSI Design: from Basic Misconceptions to Advanced Techniques
Tue, May 03, 2011 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Massimo Alioto, University of Siena (Italy), UC Berkeley
Talk Title: Demystifying Ultra-Low Power VLSI Design: from Basic Misconceptions to Advanced Techniques
Abstract: In this seminar, basic concepts and advanced techniques for ultra-low power (ULP) VLSI digital circuits and systems are presented, with emphasis on the related opportunities and challenges. Common misconceptions and incorrect beliefs are thoroughly discussed based on a coherent and fresh perspective. Variation-aware design strategies to reduce the minimum operating voltage and enable robust ULV operation are discussed. The dependence of the minimum energy point on design knobs is discussed at various levels of abstraction (from physical to the micro-architecture level), and yield is explicitly considered as further dimension in the design space. The important (and often overlooked) role played by the minimum operating voltage is clarified, along with its relation with the optimal voltage minimizing energy, which is currently the subject of a controversial debate within the scientific community.
New directions and on-going work to address various issues in extreme ULP systems will be presented. In particular, innovative highly-efficient “smart” on-chip DC-DC converters will be presented, and alternative logic styles will be introduced to demonstrate pW/gate operation.
Biography: Massimo Alioto (M’01–SM’07) is with the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Siena since 2002, where he became Associate Professor in 2005. In 2007, he was a Visiting Professor at EPFL - Lausanne (Switzerland). In 2009-2011, he is Visiting Professor at BWRC – UCBerkeley, investigating on next-generation ultra-low power circuits and wireless nodes. He has authored or co-authored more than 160 publications on journals (55+, mostly IEEE Transactions) and conference proceedings. He is an IEEE Senior Member, Chair of the “VLSI Systems and Applications” Technical Committee of the IEEE CASS, and he was IEEE CASS Distinguished Lecturer in 2009-2010. He serves as Track Chair for several conferences (ISCAS, ICCD, ICECS, ICM) and as Associate Editor of several journals (including the IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems). He was Technical Program Chair for the conference ICM 2010.
Host: Massoud Pedram
Location: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall Of Letters, Arts & Sciences (GFS) - 118
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. -
Network Modulation: Simultaneous Optimality in Multi-User Communication
Wed, May 11, 2011 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Yuval Kochman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Talk Title: Network Modulation: Simultaneous Optimality in Multi-User Communication
Abstract: The choice of modulation domain plays a major role in communications, both in deriving performance limits and in the design of practical schemes which decouple the signal processing task of channel equalization from coding. Thus, choosing the "right" basis is of central importance. For example, the capacity of the Gaussian inter-symbol interference (ISI) channel is given by the water-filling solution, applied in the frequency domain; the same transformation also allows to use popular schemes such as Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) which employs the discrete Fourier transform. The singular-value decomposition (SVD) plays a similar role for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels. Common to both cases is diagonalization: they yield parallel independent equivalent channels. But do we really need such orthogonality? Capacity can be achieved for both the ISI and MIMO channels using non-orthogonal equivalent channels, by a receiver which performs triagularlization of the channel (rather than diagonalization) and then decision-feedback equalization or successive interference cancellation (SIC). This is done without performing any transformation at the encoder. It is therefore natural to ask, what can be achieved by allowing (in addition to linear processing at the receiver) both an encoder transformation (linear unitary processing) and SIC.
In this work we show that in various communication scenarios, such a combination is indeed advantageous. In particular, the degrees of freedom earned by allowing SIC may be used for obtaining a domain which is simultaneously optimal for two users. We demonstrate this advantage by applying the network modulation approach to several problems. For some cases of joint source-channel coding over MIMO broadcast channels, we are able to derive the optimal distortion region by applying a hybrid digital-analog scheme over the equivalent triangular channels. For the two-way MIMO relay channel we find the capacity in the high signal-to-noise ratio limit by using physical-layer modulo-lattice arithmetics over these equivalent channels. For the Gaussian common-message MIMO broadcast channel, as well as for Gaussian rateless coding, we get schemes which allow to achieve the known optimal performance using standard scalar codes.
Joint work with Anatoly Khina, Uri Erez and Gregory W. Wornell.
Biography: Yuval Kochman received his B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Tel Aviv University in 1993, 2003 and 2010, respectively. He is a postdoctoral associate at the at the Signals, Information and Algorithms Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), since 2009. Outside academia, he has worked in the areas of radar and digital communications. His research interests include information theory, communications and signal processing.
Host: Giuseppe Caire, caire@usc.edu, EEB 540, x04683
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
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. -
Algorithmic Aspects of Sensor Networking and Green Buildings of the Future Internet
Wed, May 11, 2011 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Sotiris Nikoletseas, Professor, Computer Engineering and Informatics Department of Patras University, and Greece Director, SensorsLab at the Computer Technology Institute (CTI)
Talk Title: Algorithmic Aspects of Sensor Networking and Green Buildings of the Future Internet
Abstract: The talk is structured into three parts. We first present representative algorithms for important problems in wireless sensor networks, such as data propagation, energy optimization and mobility management. We examine key protocol design techniques as well as performance evaluation aspects by both analytic means and large scale algorithmic engineering, including actual implementation in experimental test-beds.
We then discuss characteristic research challenges of energy efficient buildings of the Future Internet, focusing on smart service provision in the context of IPv6 sensor technologies. In particular, we focus on the objectives, approach and services of the on-going EU-funded project HOBNET (HOlistic Platform Design for Smart Buildings of the Future InterNET, www.hobnet-project.eu); we discuss the complementarity of smart automation to other components of energy informatics, such as cognitive, user-aware energy management and smart grid technologies.
We conclude with some relevant work in progress, mainly related to the new paradigm of radiation aware wireless networking.
Biography: Sotiris Nikoletseas is a Professor at the Computer Engineering and Informatics Department of Patras University, Greece and Director of the SensorsLab at the Computer Technology Institute (CTI). He has been a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Geneva and Ottawa. His research interests include algorithmic aspects of wireless sensor networks and ad-hoc mobile computing, fundamental aspects of modern networking (focus on efficiency and reliability), probabilistic techniques and random graphs, average case analysis and probabilistic algorithms, computational complexity and approximation algorithms, algorithmic engineering and large scale simulation. He has coauthored over 150 publications in international Journals and refereed Conferences, 18 Invited Chapters in Books by major publishers and two Books, one on the Probabilistic Method and another one on theoretical aspects of sensor networks (Springer Verlag). He has served as the Program Committee Chair of several Conferences (including ALGOSENSORS 2011, MOBIWAC 2011, SEA 2005, MSWiM 2007 and DCOSS 2008), and as Associate Editor, Editor of Special Issues and Member of the Editorial Board of major Journals (like TCS, IEEE TC, COMNET, IJDSN, JEA). He has co-initiated international events related to sensor networks (ALGOSENSORS, DCOSS). He has coordinated several externally funded European Union R&D Projects related to fundamental aspects of modern networks.
Host: Professor Viktor K. Prasanna
Location: 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Janice Thompson
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. -
TSUBAME2.0 - Hybrid Petascale Computing in Practice
Mon, May 23, 2011 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Satoshi Matsuoka, Tokyo Institute of Technology
Talk Title: TSUBAME2.0 - Hybrid Petascale Computing in Practice
Series: CEI Distinguished Lecture Series in Energy Informatics
Abstract: TSUBAME2.0 is the latest incarnation of the series of clusters that have been built at Tokyo Institute of Technology, and has become the first supercomputer in Japan to reach the Petaflops plateau. TSUBAME 2.0 embodies many unique features derived from years of research into HPC, especially keeping in mind retaining or improving bandwidth scalability, fault tolerance, green, using the latest hardware components such as GPUs and SSDs, as well as employing some of the latest software research results from labs at Tokyo Tech. Prof. Matsuoka will also touch upon its possible use to simulations of natural disasters that have hit Japan recently, demonstrating that despite its relatively small size as well as adoption of hybrid architectures it scales well to the use of thousands of GPUs as well as demonstrates performance topping the largest machines such as the ORNL Jaguar.
Biography: Satoshi Matsuoka is a full Professor at the Global Scientific Information and Computing Center of Tokyo Institute of Technology. He is the leader of TSUBAME series of supercomputers, which became the 4th fastest in the world on the Top500 list and was awarded the "Greenest Production Supercomputer in the World" prize on the Green 500 in Nov, 2010.
Prof. Matsuoka has also co-lead the Japanese national grid project NAREGI between 2003-2007, and is currently leading various projects such as the JST-CREST Ultra Low Power HPC. He has authored over 500 papers according to Google Scholar, and has chaired many ACM/IEEE international conferences, including the Technical Papers Chair for SC’09, Community Chair for SC11, and Program Chair planned for SC’13. He has won many awards including the JSPS Prize from the Japan Society for Promotion of Science in 2006, awarded by his Highness Prince Akishinomiya.
Host: Prof. Viktor K. Prasanna
More Info: http://cei.usc.edu/news/lecturesLocation: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall Of Letters, Arts & Sciences (GFS) - 106
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Yogesh Simmhan
Event Link: http://cei.usc.edu/news/lectures
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. -
Market-Oriented Cloud Computing and the Aneka Platform
Fri, May 27, 2011 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Rajkumar Buyya, Professor/The University of Melbourne and Manjrasoft, Australia
Talk Title: Market-Oriented Cloud Computing and the Aneka Platform
Abstract: Computing is being transformed to a model consisting of services that are commoditised and delivered in a manner similar to utilities such as water, electricity, gas, and telephony. In such a model, users access services based on their requirements without regard to where the services are hosted. Several computing paradigms have promised to deliver this utility computing vision. Cloud computing is the most recent emerging paradigm promising to turn the vision of "computing utilities" into a reality.
Cloud computing has emerged as one of the buzzwords in the ICT industry. Several IT vendors are promising to offer storage, computation and application hosting services, and provide coverage in several continents, offering Service-Level Agreements (SLA) backed performance and uptime promises for their services. It delivers infrastructure, platform, and software (application) as services, which are made available as subscription-based services in a pay-as-you-go model to consumers. The price that Cloud Service Providers charge can vary with time and the quality of service (QoS) expectations of consumers.
This talk (1) presents the 21st century vision of computing and identifies various IT paradigms promising to deliver the vision of computing utilities; (2) defines the architecture for creating market-oriented Clouds by leveraging technologies such as VMs; (3) provides thoughts on market-based resource management strategies that encompass both customer-driven service management and computational risk management to sustain SLA-oriented resource allocation; (4) presents Aneka, a software system for rapid development of Cloud applications and their deployment on private/public Clouds with resource provisioning driven by SLAs and user QoS requirements, (5) reports experimental results on deploying Cloud applications in engineering, gaming, and health care domains on private or public Clouds, and (6) concludes with the need for convergence of competing IT paradigms for delivering our 21st century vision along with pathways for future research.
Biography: Dr. Rajkumar Buyya is Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering; and Director of the Cloud Computing and Distributed Systems (CLOUDS) Laboratory at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is also serving as the founding CEO of Manjrasoft., a spin-off company of the University, commercializing its innovations in Cloud Computing. He has authored 350 publications and four text books. He also edited several books including "Cloud Computing: Principles and Paradigms" recently published by Wiley Press, USA.
Software technologies for Grid and Cloud computing developed under Dr. Buyya's leadership have gained rapid acceptance and are in use at several academic institutions and commercial enterprises in 40 countries around the world. Dr. Buyya has led the establishment and development of key community activities, including serving as foundation Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Scalable Computing and five IEEE/ACM conferences. These contributions and international research leadership of Dr. Buyya are recognized through the award of "2009 IEEE Medal for Excellence in Scalable Computing" from the IEEE Computer Society, USA. Manjrasoft’s Aneka Cloud technology developed under his leadership has received "2010 Asia Pacific Frost & Sullivan New Product Innovation Award".Board of major Journals (like TCS, IEEE TC, COMNET, IJDSN, JEA). He has co-initiated international events related to sensor networks (ALGOSENSORS, DCOSS). He has coordinated several externally funded European Union R&D Projects related to fundamental aspects of modern networks.
Host: Professor Viktor K. Prasanna
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 324
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Janice Thompson
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. -
"Readying Machine Learning for Quantum Computing"
Fri, May 27, 2011 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Hartmut Neven, Google
Talk Title: "Readying Machine Learning for Quantum Computing"
Abstract: Modern approaches to machine learning formulate training of a classifier as an optimization problem in which simultaneously the training error as well as the classifier complexity is minimized. For computational efficiency typically a convex objective is constructed. But it is well known that such a choice comes at a cost. For instance, convex loss functions designed to measure training performance are not as robust to noise as their non-convex counter parts and convex regularization does
not achieve as high levels of sparsity as versions involving the L0-norm. Non-convex losses also figure prominently in recent attempts to derive tighter bounds for the generalization error. Here we report on experiments to train with non-convex objectives using discrete optimization in a formulation adapted to take advantage of emerging hardware for quantum optimization. A key finding is that the resulting
classifiers are already competitive when using as temporary stand-in a classical heuristic solver. We will give an overview of the state of the quantum hardware development as well as what advantages in terms of quality of the solution we can hope to attain from a theoretical point of view.
Host: Daniel Lidar
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Daniel Lidar
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.
