CISE Research Resources: From High Performance to Low Power: Infrastructure for Ubiquitous Computing

EIA-0130143

Anand Sivasubramaniam

Pennsylvania State University

CISE Research Resources: From High performance to Low Power: Infrastructure for Ubiquitous Computing

This CISE Research Resources proposal asks to establish a computing infrastructure laboratory in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Pennsyvlvania State University. The resources will include a 16 node dual Pentium/Linux cluster connected by Gigabit Ethernet, laptops and PDAs with wireless LAN capabilities, and testing/measurement equipment for evaluating energy-performance trade-offs on the mobile devices. This laboratory will support the research activities of the following NSF-funded projects: 1) Scheduling Support for High Performance Clusters; 2) Energy-Efficient Architctures and Their Interaction with Software: A Java Perspective; 3) EOC: An Energy-Aware Optimizing Compiler Framework; and 4) Optimization and integrated Control of Low Power Wireless Multimedia Networks. These projects address different components of this ubiquitous computing infrastructure. At the high performance end, the principal investigators will examine architectural and systems software issues in the design and deployment of clusters of workstations for the emerging and demanding applications (such as web services, databases, graphics and visualization applications, and multimedia) to provide high performance and guaranteed service. At the resource-constrained end, they will examine architectural, runtime and compilation optimizations, specifically targeted for conserving battery energy and to make energy-performance trade-offs. They also will examine the issue of wireless communication that is intended to seamlessly integrate the mobile/handheld devices with the servers (clusters) on the wired network.

The equipment will serve as a platform for the experimental activities and evaluation of prototypes in these projects. The laboratory will also be used in many of the courses that we teach at the graduate and undergraduate level to introduce students to this important emerging topic.