Dream Fellowship: Energy-Modulated Computing

这对我来说既是一个独特的机会，也是一个挑战，因为我的目标是确定一系列连贯的问题，以便在这项奖学金结束后继续努力。这些挑战有时不仅与寻找我们不知道的解决方案有关，还与寻找我们不知道的事情有关。多年来我的主要研究领域是电子系统工程。通过思考和参与这一领域的创造性过程，首先重要的是要看到创造力的需求来自哪里。显然，这些呼吁来自现实生活，来自电子技术支持的社会和行业的需求。进一步关注信息和通信技术关键领域之间的联系和协同作用，这些领域越来越具有共同的价值观和标准：服务质量、可用性、成本效益、性能、可靠性以及它们如何与资源提供相互作用。半导体技术可以将电子器件和电力集中在硅晶片的小区域上。与此同时，涉及软件和硬件的工程流程无法再维持这种增长；它们要求设计和测试过程具有更多的资源意识。人们现在开始使用的计算机系统的特点是绿色、节能和功率比例。许多例子将资源和能源意识问题带入计算和电子领域。从能源供应的角度来看，电池寿命、能量收集、功率控制和调节正在改变系统工程实践。从能源消耗的角度来看，频谱的高端被庞大的数据工厂所占据（例如，俄勒冈州的谷歌工厂估计需要103兆瓦的电力，足以供应纽卡斯尔的每个家庭）。中间是多核芯片，比如英特尔的48核SCC，功耗在25-125W之间。频谱的低端是与生物有机体接口的系统，其功率限制在微瓦水平。多年来，系统设计方法的发展完全依赖于功能扩展和尽可能多的资源可用性，以满足他们的性能需求。然而，仅仅根据层次和面向对象的原则构建系统，而没有适当考虑底层资源，往往会导致效率低下，同样，基于局部最优原则的控制和资源分配的完全分散也会导致效率低下。这项研究的重要成果之一可能是获得由能量方面“调制”的电子系统设计的进化路线图。在实现这一目标的过程中，我将考虑涉及不同功能和性质的组件和设备的能量特征、能量与可靠性之间的相互作用、功率约束和服务质量、设计标准的“能量努力”理念、博弈论方法在资源驱动计算中的可能作用、各种建模和元建模技术，以及设计自动化问题。另外两项重要成就是：为工业提供节能系统的新设计范例、方法和工具的知识转移途径，以及激发新一代研究人员对创造力的热情的机制。

This is both a unique opportunity and a challenge for me as I set my aims at identifying a coherent set of problems to work on after this Fellowship. Such challenges are sometimes associated with searching not only for solutions to what we don't know, but also for the things we don't know that we don't know. My main area has for years been electronic systems engineering. By thinking and engaging creative processes in this area, it is first of all important to see where calls for creativity originate. Obviously, these calls come from real life, from the needs of society and industries where electronics is enabling technology. Focusing further, such calls can be found in the links and synergies between the pivotal areas of ICT, which increasingly share common values and criteria: quality of service, usability, cost-efficiency, performance, dependability, and how they interact with the provision of resources. Semiconductor technology permits formidable concentration of electronic devices and electrical power on small areas of a silicon die. At the same time, engineering processes, involving software and hardware, can no longer sustain this growth; they require the design and test processes to be much more resource-conscious. Green, energy-frugal, power-proportional are qualities of computer systems that people begin to use now. Numerous examples bring up the issue of resource and energy-awareness into computing and electronics. From the energy supply perspective, battery life, energy harvesting, power control and regulation are changing systems engineering practices. From the energy consumption viewpoint, the high end of the spectrum is occupied by mammoth data plants (e.g. Google plant in Oregon was estimated to require 103MWatt of power, enough to supply every home in Newcastle). In the middle, there are many-core chips, such as Intel's 48-core SCC, consuming between 25-125W. The low end of the spectrum is systems that interface to biological organisms, where power constraints are at the level of microwatts. Over the years system design methodologies developed completely relying on feature scaling and availability of as many resources as needed in order to satisfy their performance appetites. However, architecting systems solely on the principles of hierarchy and object-orientation, without proper account of underlying resources often leads to inefficiency, likewise does the full decentralisation of control and distribution of resources on principles of local optima. One of the important achievements of this fellowship could be obtaining an evolutionary roadmap for electronic system design which is "modulated" by the energy aspect. In working towards this goal, I will think about issues involving energy characterisation of components and devices of different functionality and nature, interplay between energy and dependability, power constraints and quality of service, an idea of "energetic effort" for design criteria, possible role of game-theoretic approaches in resource-driven computing and various modelling and meta-modelling techniques, as well as design automation issues. The other two important achievements would be: knowledge-transfer routes for providing industry with new design paradigms, methodologies and tools for energy-frugal systems, as well as mechanisms for enthusing a new generation of your researchers about creativity.