PhD Candidate, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Abstract
Mitigating Variability in HPC Systems and Applications for Performance and Power Efficiency
Power consumption and process variability are two important, interconnected, challenges of future generation large-scale High Performance Computing (HPC) data centers. For example, current production petaflop supercomputers consume more than 10 megawatts of machine and cooling power that costs millions of dollars every year. As HPC moves towards exascale computing, these costs will increase and power consumption is expected to become a major concern. Not solely dynamic behavior of HPC applications (such as irregular or imbalanced applications) but also dynamic behavior of HPC systems (such as thermal, power, and frequency variations among processors) makes it challenging to optimize the performance and power efficiency of large scale applications. Smart and adaptive runtime systems have great potential to handle these challenges transparently from the application. In my research, I first analyze frequency, temperature, and power variations in large-scale HPC systems using thousands of cores and different applications. After I identify the cause of each of these variations, I propose software and hardware based solutions to mitigate these variations to improve performance and power efficiency.
Bio
Bilge Acun is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She works at the Parallel Programming Laboratory advised by Professor Laxmikant Kale. Her dissertation research is on optimizing the performance and power efficiency of large-scale data centers and supercomputers through smart and adaptive software techniques. During her PhD, she has conducted research at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She describes herself as a problem-solver and strives to invent new technologies to help people and the world both in her academic research and in her entrepreneurial pursuits.
Bilge’s research has been recognized as a cover-featured article in the prestigious IEEE Computer magazine, as well as at top conferences in the area of High Performance Computing (such as SC, ICS). Bilge is the lead inventor of three patent-pending technologies, 2 of which are related to her thesis research.
In addition to her graduate studies, Bilge is leading the development of a patent-pending human-computer interaction device for computer users with ergonomic problems, including Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and chronic wrist or shoulder pain – a problem that many computer users suffer from. Recently, her project was supported by a 2016 AWARE (Accelerating Women and underRepresented Entrepreneurs) Grant from the UIUC Research Park.
In 2017, Bilge was selected as one of four Illinois Innovation prize finalists. The award “honors a student who stands out as a passionate and creative innovator and entrepreneur, who is working with world-changing technology, and is seen as a role model to others”. She is also a recipient of the competitive Saburo Muroga Endowed Fellowship and the Grace Hopper Celebration Travel Grant from the UIUC Department of Computer Science in 2013, from Google in 2017.