NSF awards UCLA Engineering
$10M to create
customized computing technology
The UCLA Henry Samueli School of
Engineering and Applied Science has been awarded a $10 million
grant by the National Science Foundation's Expeditions in Computing
program to develop high-performance, energy efficient, customizable
computing that could revolutionize the way computers are used
in health care and other important applications.
In particular, UCLA Engineering researchers will demonstrate
how the new technology, known as domain-specific computing,
could transform the role of medical imaging and hemodynamic
simulation, providing more cost-effective and convenient solutions
for preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic procedures and dramatically
improving health care quality, efficiency and patient outcomes.
"This significant award is another testament to the world-class
faculty here at UCLA who continue to push the envelope to solve
society's most pressing issues," said UCLA Chancellor Gene
Block. "We are grateful to the NSF, which has repeatedly
provided crucial funding to our faculty, helping to place the
university among the nation's top five in research funding."
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| Jason Cong |
In
an effort to meet ever-increasing computing needs in various
fields, the computing industry has entered an "era of parallelization,"
in which tens of thousands of computer servers are connected
in warehouse-scale data centers, said Jason Cong, the Chancellor's
Professor of Computer Science and director of the new UCLA Center
for Domain-Specific Computing (CDSC), which will oversee the
research. But these parallel, general-purpose computing systems
still face serious challenges in terms of performance, energy,
space and cost.
Domain-specific computing holds significant advantages, Cong
said. While general-purpose computing relies on computer architecture
and languages aimed at any type of application, domain-specific
computing utilizes a customizable architecture and custom-oriented,
high-level computer languages tailored to a particular application
area or domain — in this case, medical imaging and hemodynamic
modeling. This customization ultimately results in much less
energy consumption, faster results, lower costs and increased
productivity.
The goal of the new UCLA center, Cong said, is to look beyond
parallelization and focus on domain-specific customization to
bring significant power-performance efficiency improvement to
important application domains.
"The broader impact of our work at the CDSC will be measured
by the new digital revolution enabled by customized computing,"
Cong said. "We will demonstrate the feasibility and advantages
of the proposed research in the domain of health care, given
its significant impact on the national economy and quality-of-life
issues.
"In regards to medical imaging and hemodynamic modeling,
we'll be able to see inside the brain and facilitate real-time
surgery, for example," he said. "Also, doctors will
be able to do preventative procedures much faster with automatic
analysis and diagnosis of MRIs and CT scan images. Much of the
work that relies on people today may take hours or days to complete
with existing computing technology, but with the domain-specific
customizable technique, the work can be done in minutes. The
whole team is very excited about the NSF support we're getting
to develop this new approach."
UCLA is one of three lead institutions receiving the latest
round of awards under the NSF Expeditions in Computing program.
The program, established last year by the agency's Directorate
for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE),
provides the CISE research and education community with the
opportunity to pursue ambitious, fundamental research agendas
that promise to define the future of computing and information
and render great benefit to society. Funded at levels of up
to $2 million per year for five years, the Expeditions programs
represent some of the largest single investments currently made
by the directorate.
"We're looking forward to domain-specific computing as
an approach to tackling the parallelism and energy challenges
in future multicore systems," said Vivek Sarkar, associate
director of the CDSC and a professor of computer science at
Rice University. "The fact that our work will begin in
the critically important health care domain is a huge motivation
for the entire team."
Research being conducted by the CDSC is a collaborative effort
among faculty from UCLA's engineering school, medical school
and applied mathematics program, as well as faculty from Rice
University, Ohio State University and UC Santa Barbara.
"The CDSC will thrive under Jason's leadership," said
Vijay K. Dhir, dean of UCLA Engineering. "Jason exemplifies
the type of faculty we have here at the school, showing unwavering
dedication to both research and education."
Cong said he and his colleagues recognize that to achieve broad
and lasting success there will also be a need to train a new
generation of students who are prepared for customized computing
and can effectively apply such techniques to many areas of society,
furthering the digital revolution.
To accomplish this, the CDSC will integrate research with education,
exposing graduate, undergraduate and high school students to
the new concepts and research from this project through several
new courses jointly developed and shared by researchers from
all four universities.
Summer research fellowship programs will be created to support
high school and undergraduate students, and special efforts
will be made to attract underrepresented students at all levels
through partnerships with campus organizations focused on diversity
such, as UCLA Engineering's Center for Excellence in Engineering
Diversity.
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Wileen Wong Kromhout
August 11, 2009
