We are entering an exciting era for systems design. Digital information is increasing at exponential rates and new applications are being developed to extract fresh insights from all this data. At the same time, we are seeing interesting inflection points in technology - faster, more complex, processors are being replaced by simpler, power-efficient multicores; traditional memory and storage technologies are being challenged by new non-volatile memories like phase-change RAM and Memristors; optics is replacing electrical communications. Consequently, traditional approaches to design "better, faster, cheaper" systems will need to be (and are being) rethought, both at the hardware and software levels. In this talk, I will discuss these recent trends, their implications for future hardware re-designs, and the immense opportunities ahead for new solutions that cross-cut the technology, architecture, and software layers.
Bio: Partha Ranganathan is a distinguished technologist at Hewlett Packard Labs where he currently leads a research program on future data-centric data centers. His research interests are in energy efficiency and systems architecture and modeling. He has worked extensively in these areas including key contributions around energy-aware user interfaces, heterogeneous multi-core processors, power capping and federated enterprise power management, energy modeling and benchmarking, disaggregated blade server architectures, and most recently, storage hierarchy and systems redesign for non-volatile memory. Dr. Ranganathan's work has led to several commercial products and has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Slashdot, and several other venues. He was named one of the world's top young innovators by MIT Technology Review, and has received Rice University's Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni award. Dr. Ranganathan received his B.Tech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Rice University, Houston.