Events Calendar

Energy Informatics Seminar

Speaker: Krishna Palem, Rice University

Talk Title: Sensoptimized Systems for “Good enough” Computing: Ultra-efficient Cortical Processors through Melding Neuroscience with Inexact Architectures

Series: Energy Informatics Distinguished Seminar Series

Abstract: Increasingly, information systems such as cellphones, iPods and glasses—more broadly, embedded systems—are delivering information to be consumed by our senses. Such information, in the form of speech, graphics, or video, is subject to varying levels of processing by our nervous systems, followed by our higher cognitive functions in the brain. Yet, system designs today do not often take advantage of the compensatory processing done neuro-cognitively by our brain. Rather, the current hardware, software, and industrial design methodologies aim to deliver the best possible quality to maximize the user’s experience. The resulting computing platforms are over-engineered and expensive—in terms of monetary cost, and the amount of energy (or battery) consumed. For several years now, we have been developing a philosophy and a design methodology to counter this trend aimed at the innovation of digital computing systems which, when interacting with our senses, are optimized to be just “good enough” and thus not over-engineered This is achieved by factoring in the compensatory neuro-cognitive processing done by our sensory pathways, and by trading away the accuracy of the system in return for disproportionately high savings or gains. The resulting sensoptimied systems are meant to be significantly more efficient than those designed conventionally. At their core, our sensoptimized systems are realized using inexact integrated circuits (ICs) and computing architectures, sometimes dubbed probabilistic CMOS (PCMOS)—a technology and design methodology which our group has been developing for over a decade. Looking into the future, inexact circuits and sensoptimization could be the basis for realizing families of cortical processors which meld principles of neuroscience with the design of good-enough computing platforms. Here, the opportunities are many and we will conclude the technical portion of our talk with an overview of a sensoptimized cortical processor we are currently developing for supporting computer-vision at the embedded scale.

Biography: Krishna V. Palem is the Ken and Audrey Kennedy Professor at Rice University with appointments in CS, in ECE, and Statistics, and is a scholar in the Baker Institute for Public Policy. He founded and directed the NTU-Rice Institute on Sustainable and Applied Infodynamics. He was a Moore Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Caltech, and a Schonbrunn Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he was recognized for excellence in teaching. His advisee Suren Talla was awarded the Janet Fabri Prize for outstanding dissertation, and his related work on the foundations of architecture assembly for designing reconfigurable embedded SoC architectures, developed at Proceler Inc. which he co-founded as a CTO, was a nominee for the Analysts choice awards as one of the four outstanding technologies. A decade ago, he pioneered a novel technology dubbed Probabilistic CMOS (PCMOS) which resulted in inexact or approximate computing. PCMOS has been recognized by three best-paper awards, as one of the ten technologies 'likely to change the way we live' by MIT's Technology Review, and as one of the seven 'emerging world changing technologies' by IEEE as part of its 125th anniversary celebrations. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, the ACM and the IEEE. In 2012, Forbes (India) ranked him second on the list of eighteen scientists who are “..some of the finest minds of Indian origin.” He is the recipient of the 2008 W. Wallace McDowell Award, IEEE Computer Society's highest technical award and one of computing's most prestigious individual honors.

Host: Viktor Prasanna

More Info: http://cei.usc.edu/news

Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Annie Yu

Event Link: http://cei.usc.edu/news