Talk in the International Speaker Series, Prof. X. Sharon Hu

September 5, 2022

On Monday September 05 2022, Prof. Xiaobo Sharon Hu gave a talk in the GS-IMTR's International Speaker Series about her research on cross the technology stack, from device to application, for in-memory computing.

Abstract: Data transfer between processors and memory is a major bottleneck in improving application performance on traditional computing hardware. This is particularly true for data intensive workloads such as many machine learning, bioinformatics and security applications. In-memory computing (IMC), where significant amount of data processing is performed directly in memory, can be an effective alternative to address this bottleneck. However, due to the myriad of design options for an IMC based solution, harnessing the benefits of the IMC paradigm requires cross-layer efforts spanning from devices and circuits to architectures and systems.

This talk will showcase several representative cross-layer IMC-based design efforts. In particular, the talk will highlight how ferroelectric FETs, an emerging non-volatile device technology, can be exploited to implement various IMC functions (e.g., exact and best match for associative search, configurable look-up tables, etc.), and what are some unique challenges in designing IMC circuits and architectures. IMC solutions for several popular machine learning and other applications will be analyzed end-to-end to reveal the benefits contributed by each design layer, which can serve as guides for future research efforts.

Bio: X. Sharon Hu is a professor in the department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, USA. Her research interests include low-power system design, circuit and architecture design with emerging technologies, real-time embedded systems and hardware-software co-design. She has published more than 400 papers in these areas. Some of her recognitions include the Best Paper Award from the Design Automation Conference and  the International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design, and NSF Career award. She has participated in several large industry and government sponsored center-level projects and was a theme lead in an NSF/SRC E2CDA project. She served as the General Chair and TPC Chair of Design Automation Conference, Real-Time Systems Symposium, etc. She is the Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems, and has also served as Associate Editor for a number of ACM and IEEE journals. X. Sharon Hu is a Fellow of the ACM and a Fellow of the IEEE.

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