报告题目：Popcorn Linux: System Software for Heterogeneous Multicore Architectures

报告时间：2017-04-13（周四）10：00

报告地点：西一楼学术报告厅（339）

报告专家：Binoy Ravindran （VT）

讲座具体内容和Prof. Ravindran见附件。

BTW, Prof. Ravindran is scouting for good postdoc candidates for the Popcorn Linux project, with strong background and skills in the space of virtualization, OS kernels, compilers, run-times, etc. Detailed information could be found at http://www.ssrg.ece.vt.edu/positions.html. Any interested folks can get in touch with him.

TITLE
Popcorn Linux: System Software for Heterogeneous Multicore Architectures
ABSTRACT
The recent possibility of integrating multiple OS-capable, heterogeneous instruction-setarchitecture
(ISA)-processors in the same platform (e.g., the Intel Xeon and Intel Xeon
Phi; Intel Xeon and ARMv8) for obtaining significantly improved performance and
energy savings raises interesting programmability questions. In particular, given the tight
integration between system components, can a shared-memory programming model be
adopted, enhancing programmability, while obtaining high performance and energy
gains? If this could be done, an enormous amount of existing code written for
homogeneous-ISA shared memory architectures would not have to be rewritten to use a
new programming paradigm (e.g., code offloading) that is often expensive and error
prone. Moreover, on a heterogeneous-ISA platform, developers would not have to
abandon the programming model that they are already familiar with.
In this talk, I will present the vision of a system software stack that enables traditional
POSIX/OpenMP shared memory applications written for homogeneous-ISA machines to
execute transparently on OS-capable heterogeneous-ISA machines. With such a stack,
applications run transparently on different ISA processors, migrating across architectures
at run-time to exploit ISA affinity as well as load, yielding high performance and reduced
energy consumption. The key ideas that enable this vision include a replicated kernel OS
that exports distributed shared memory and a single system image, a compiler that
produces multi-ISA binaries, and a run-time system that enables process and thread
migration across ISAs. The Popcorn Linux-based OS and LLVM-based compiler/runtime
system implement this vision (popcornlinux.org). Our experimental evaluations on
multiple heterogeneous platforms including Xeon/Xeon-Phi and Xeon/ARMv8 reveal
gains in application execution time as well as energy consumption.
BIO
Binoy Ravindran is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech,
where he leads the Systems Software Research Group (ssrg.ece.vt.edu), which conducts
research on operating systems, virtualization, compilers, run-times, distributed systems,
and real-time systems. Ravindran and his students have published more than 250 papers
in these spaces, some of which have won best paper award nominations and awards.
Some of his group’s results have been transitioned to the US DOD. Ravindran has
graduated 18 PhD students, mentored 8 postdoctoral scholars, is an ACM Distinguished
Scientist, and serves on the Editorial Boards of IEEE Transactions on Computers, IEEE
Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, ACM Transactions on Embedded
Computing Systems, and IEEE Design & Test.