EECS Colloquium:Architectural Support for Interdisciplinary Data Science Research — Lu Peng, Louisiana State University

About the event

Abstract: The ever-increasing amount of global data introduces enormous challenges to computer systems in the aspect of performance, power consumption, reliability, and security. Deep learning and other advanced algorithms have been proposed to handle the problems in the layers of software. However, they require significant computing resources and memory bandwidth. In consequence, traditional CPU-based platforms are no longer the best choices for deploying these algorithms because they do not provide sufficient parallelism. Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) can provide improved performance but at the cost of higher power consumption. FPGAs and ASICs have garnered attention because of their application-specific nature, ability to achieve high degrees of parallelism, and high energy efficiency. In this talk, I will introduce our recent work in the computer system and architectural support for interdisciplinary data science research including hardware accelerator for deep neural networks, accelerator design for smart contracts processing, and an application of blockchain in contact tracing against COVID-19. IAn addition, another recent work of improving resilience for Big Data kernels will be briefly introduced.

Bio: Lu Peng is the Gerard L. “Jerry” Rispone professor with the Division of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His research interests include computer systems and architecture focusing on many design issues on CPUs and GPUs, hardware accelerators, and applications for deep learning neural networks and blockchains. As PI or Co-PI, he has led or co-led several interdisciplinary research projects with collaborating researchers from different fields: Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Statistics, Chemistry, Pathobiological Sciences, and Meteorology. His work has been supported by multiple federal and state agencies, including NSF, NIH, NRL, DOE/LLNL, ORAU, NASA/LaSpace, LA Board of Regents, and LSU Research Council, as well as industrial companies including Chevron and Xilinx. He was a recipient of the ORAU Ralph E. Power junior faculty enhancement awards in 2007 and the Best Paper Award from IEEE IGSC in 2019 and IEEE ICCD in 2001.