CISE:CNS:EAGER: Exploring Managed Soft Computing for Data Intensive Applications

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Inaccuracy in computation has usually been considered with a negative connotation and, therefore,conventional computing systems have been designed with a strict notion of correctness.However, inaccuracy or approximation is not always bad since several application domainsare intrinsically tolerant to varying degrees of relaxation in accuracy,and thus, such a property can be exploited for significant gain in application performance or fault-tolerance.The motivation of this EAGER project is to investigate the feasibility of utilizing such approximation,also known as "soft computing", for data-intensive applications for predicting the performance-power-accuracytrade-offs. The research consists of three intertwined tasks. The first task would examine a variety ofhigh performance computing (HPC) and MapReduce style data analytic applications, and determinewhich classes of applications are suitable for soft computing.The second component of the research is aimed at developing appropriate techniques for facilitatingsoft computing, while the last task focuses on examining the possibility of developing a control theoreticmodel for formalizing the various tradeoff analysis.This project aims at demonstrating that it is possible to achieve significant power and performancegain for a wide variety of data intensive applications through soft computing. The approach adopted in this research has the potential to influence the programming paradigm for manyclasses of scientific and business applications for optimizing the power-performance behavior.The cross-cutting nature of this research has potential to foster new research directions in several areas,spanning high performance computing, computer architecture, compilers, and system/application software.Undergraduate and graduate students involved in this research will get versatile training in several areas.The software tools developed in this research will be used in teachingexisting and new courses, and will be made publicly available.