Distributed Frameworks for Iterative Computations on Commodity Hardware and FPGAs

Departments: Computer Science
Time: Thursday, October 15, 2015 - 10:30am - 11:30am
Type: Seminar Series
Presenter: Lixin Gao; University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Room/Office: Watson 200
Location:
51 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06511
United States

Computer Science Colloquium

Lixin Gao
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Distributed Frameworks for Iterative Computations on Commodity Hardware and FPGAs

Abstract:
Advances in sensing, storage, and networking technology have created huge collections of high-volume, high-dimensional data. Making sense of these data is critical in enabling companies and organizations to make better business decisions, and it brings convenience to our daily life. Recent advances in data mining, machine learning, and applied statistics have led to a flurry of data-analytic techniques that typically require an iterative refinement process. However, the massive amount of data involved and potentially numerous iterations required make performing data analytics in a timely manner challenging.
In this talk, I will present a series of distributed frameworks that enable fast iterative computations. By providing the support of iterative computations and asynchronous prioritized execution, we can ensure that the iterative computations converge fast. We have implemented the distributed frameworks on a cluster consisting of commodity servers and FPGAs, thus enabling massive data processing in a heterogeneous environment. At the end of the talk, if time allows, I will provide an overview of my research group's ongoing projects.

Bio:
Lixin Gao is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and her M.S. in Computer Engineering from Florida Atlantic University. Her research interests include social networks, Internet routing, network virtualization, and cloud computing. Between May 1999 and January 2000, she was a visiting researcher at AT&T Labs – Research and DIMACS. She was an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow between 2003-2005 and received an NSF CAREER Award in 1999. She won the best paper award from IEEE INFOCOM 2010, and the test-of-time award in ACM SIGMETRICS 2010. Her paper in ACM Cloud Computing 2011 was honored with "Paper of Distinction". In 2010, she received the Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in Research and Creative Activity. Professor Gao is a Fellow of the IEEE and the ACM.

Date: Thursday, October 15, 2015
Place: AKW 200 (51 Prospect Street)
Time: 10:30 am
Refreshments will be served at 10:15 a.m.