Addressing Data Center energy concerns through Large-scale integration: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract: Communicating a bit between processors today costs orders of magnitude more energy than computation on the bit.  As a result, communication inside and across data centers is a significant and increasing contributor to overall energy consumption by data centers. Large scale integration, where multiple processors are tightly integrated inside the same package, promises dramatic reduction in communication energy, but creates challenges in terms of power delivery, heat dissipation, and connectivity.  Cross-stack approaches may be needed to leverage the power of large-scale integration.

Bio: Rakesh Kumar is an Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on computer architecture and system-level design automation.  He is particularly excited these days about the promise and challenges of large-scale integration.