Bee3: Silly Putty For Computer Scientists!

John Davis, Microsoft Research, Mountain View

Stevenson Hall 1300
11:00 AM - 11:50 AM

Parallel computing for the masses has arrived. Unfortunately, software, tools, research, and pedagogy are lagging behind with only niche successful parallel applications existing, print statements still being used for debugging, research limited to using existing platforms, and few colleges and universities offering parallel programming and computer architecture classes for undergraduates. Let me present BEE3, the Berkeley Emulation Engine, version 3. BEE3 is a reconfigurable computing platform that we are using to target three main research areas: Computer Architecture, Systems, and Application Acceleration. Using these examples, I will demonstrate how we are using reconfigurable computing systems to help build parallel software and tools, conduct fundamental research, and provide a pedagogical platform. Finally, I will also present some of the current limitations of reconfigurable systems.