Energy Saving Techniques for Phase Change Memory (PCM)

In recent years, the energy consumption of computing systems has increased and a large fraction of this energy is consumed in main memory. Towards this, researchers have proposed use of non-volatile memory, such as phase change memory (PCM), which has low read latency and power; and nearly zero leakage power. However, the write latency and power of PCM are very high and this, along with limited write endurance of PCM present significant challenges in enabling wide-spread adoption of PCM. To address this, several architecture-level techniques have been proposed. In this report, we review several techniques to manage power consumption of PCM. We also classify these techniques based on their characteristics to provide insights into them. The aim of this work is encourage researchers to propose even better techniques for improving energy efficiency of PCM based main memory.Comment: Survey, phase change RAM (PCRAM

Deep supervised learning using local errors

Error backpropagation is a highly effective mechanism for learning high-quality hierarchical features in deep networks. Updating the features or weights in one layer, however, requires waiting for the propagation of error signals from higher layers. Learning using delayed and non-local errors makes it hard to reconcile backpropagation with the learning mechanisms observed in biological neural networks as it requires the neurons to maintain a memory of the input long enough until the higher-layer errors arrive. In this paper, we propose an alternative learning mechanism where errors are generated locally in each layer using fixed, random auxiliary classifiers. Lower layers could thus be trained independently of higher layers and training could either proceed layer by layer, or simultaneously in all layers using local error information. We address biological plausibility concerns such as weight symmetry requirements and show that the proposed learning mechanism based on fixed, broad, and random tuning of each neuron to the classification categories outperforms the biologically-motivated feedback alignment learning technique on the MNIST, CIFAR10, and SVHN datasets, approaching the performance of standard backpropagation. Our approach highlights a potential biological mechanism for the supervised, or task-dependent, learning of feature hierarchies. In addition, we show that it is well suited for learning deep networks in custom hardware where it can drastically reduce memory traffic and data communication overheads

Алгоритмы, программная архитектура и информационная технология моделирования методов масштабирования скоростей параллельных процессоров вычислительного кластера

Предложены алгоритмы масштабирования скоростей параллельных процессоров многопроцессорных систем и вычислительных кластеров, имеющих гомогенную и гетерогенную архитектуру. Разработаны программная архитектура и информационная технология для моделирования работы алгоритмов, использующих различные методы распределения заданий на процессоры, приведены примеры и результаты их экспериментального исследования, подтверждающие их эффективность для построения энергоэффективных расписаний выполнения заданий с директивными сроками выполнения в многопроцессорных системах и вычислительных кластерах.There have been proposed the algorithms for speed scaling on parallel processors for multiprocessor systems and computing clusters with homogeneous and heterogeneous architectures. Software architecture and information technology for simulation of algorithms using a variety of methods for allocating tasks to processors are developed. There are examples and the results of their experimental studies proving its effectiveness for constructing energy efficient scheduling task execution with deadlines in multiprocessor systems and computing clusters

Leveraging heterogeneity for energy minimization in data centers

Energy consumption in data centers is nowadays a critical objective because of its dramatic environmental and economic impact. Over the last years, several approaches have been proposed to tackle the energy/cost optimization problem, but most of them have failed on providing an analytical model to target both the static and dynamic optimization domains for complex heterogeneous data centers. This paper proposes and solves an optimization problem for the energy-driven configuration of a heterogeneous data center. It also advances in the proposition of a new mechanism for task allocation and distribution of workload. The combination of both approaches outperforms previous published results in the field of energy minimization in heterogeneous data centers and scopes a promising area of research

Cost Function based Event Triggered Model Predictive Controllers - Application to Big Data Cloud Services

International audienceHigh rate cluster reconfigurations is a costly issue in Big Data Cloud services. Current control solutions manage to scale the cluster according to the workload, however they do not try to minimize the number of system reconfigurations. Event-based control is known to reduce the number of control updates typically by waiting for the system states to degrade below a given threshold before reacting. However, computer science systems often have exogenous inputs (such as clients connections) with delayed impacts that can enable to anticipate states degradation. In this paper, a novel event-triggered approach is proposed. This triggering mechanism relies on a Model Predictive Controller and is defined upon the value of the optimal cost function instead of the state or output error. This controller reduces the number of control changes, in the normal operation mode, through constraints in the MPC formulation but also assures a very reactive behavior to changes of exogenous inputs. This novel control approach is evaluated using a model validated on a real Big Data system. The controller efficiently scales the cluster according to specifications, meanwhile reducing its reconfigurations