Hardware Specialization for Distributed Computing

Abstract

Several trends in the IT industry are driving an increasing specialization of the hardware layers. On the one hand, demanding workloads, large data volumes, diversity in data types, etc. are all factors contributing to make general purpose computing too inefficient. On the other hand, cloud computing and its economies of scale allow vendors to invest on specialized hardware for particular tasks that otherwise would be too expensive or consume resources needed elsewhere. In this talk I will discuss the shift towards hardware acceleration and show with several examples why specialized systems are here to stay and are likely to dominate the computer landscape for years to come. I will also discuss Enzian, an open research platform developed at ETH to enable the exploration of hardware acceleration and present some preliminary results achieved with it. Biography: Gustavo Alonso is a professor in the Department of Computer Science of ETH Zurich where he is a member of the Systems Group. His research interests include data management, databases, distributed systems, cloud computing, and hardware acceleration. Gustavo is an ACM Fellow and an IEEE Fellow as well as a Distinguished Alumnus of the Department of Computer Science of UC Santa Barbara.