Grant: Alliance Grants

In the big data era, for many data-intensive applications, such as machine learning, video processing, computational genomics, big data analytics, and network processing, their performance and energy efficiency are limited by not only the computation itself, but also the data communication. As a result, traditional general-purpose and computing-centric platforms can no longer sustain the ever-increasing demand. In this proposal, we aim to design the next-generation computing platform for data-intensive applications, with the partnership of Huawei Canada in its business of intelligent computing (https://e.huawei.com/ca/solutions/hic). Canada has a long history of innovation in the architecture design and tool automation for fine-grained reconfigurable architectures. By incorporating both specialized hardware acceleration and data-centric computing, we propose to develop an intelligent computing memory system, where we will design a high performance and energy efficient coarse-grained reconfigurable hardware accelerator chip and integrate it onto both the processor and memory sides. Moreover, we propose to provide full system support, so that data-intensive applications can easily and efficiently utilize the entire system and process the data where they sit, including the conventional processor, processor-side and memory-side accelerators, to optimize the computation and minimize the data movement. Our proposed research will develop novel hardware architecture, critical technologies and reusable methodology, as well as corresponding compilation and modeling tools, for next-generation intelligent computing memory systems in the big data era. The majority of the research results will be open source to benefit a broader community in Canada. Our program will also train next-generation highly qualified professionals and prepare their career in the highly-demanded information and communication technology sector (https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ict-tic.nsf/eng/h_it07229.html). All these will keep Canada internationally competitive in computing technologies that are key to the economy growth and healthcare improvement.