This award establishes Brigham Young University (BYU) as a research site of the Industry/University Collaborative Research Center (IUCRC) for High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing. Other sites of this collaborative research center include the University of Florida (2007) and George Washington University (2007). Reconfigurable computing (RC) technology can be divided into two areas of use: High Performance Computing (HPC) and High Performance Embedded Computing (HPEC). RC technology is used in the field of HPC to accelerate demanding computations that would otherwise be performed in software on a large-scale computing system. RC technology is used in HPEC to create high-performance embedded computing solutions in areas such as signal and image processing, real-time vision, cryptography, and network processing. The mission of this center is to investigate, develop, and evaluate new concepts, methods, infrastructure, and tools in reconfigurable HPC and HPEC, from building-block devices to infrastructure to applications, and advance these technologies through research and education for the benefit of center members, students, and the discipline at large. The research BYU will address; 1) Novel Core Architectures and Related Components for Aerospace & Defense Applications, 2) Application Mapping of HPC Codes to High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing Systems, 3) Profiling, Analysis, & Performance Optimization for Reconfigurable Computing Applications, 4) Middleware, Interfaces, & other Infrastructure for High-Performance Reconfigurable Computers.
The Center for High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing should significantly enhance the U.S. effort to maintain a strong leadership position within their area of information technology. It may also serve to bring industry and users together to define common standards. Industry members, researchers and students will gain from the interactions throughout the life of the research center. This should be a rewarding experience for all as the university has a detailed plan to achieve diversity in working with several minority institutions. Advances in RC affect virtually all disciplines of science and engineering which require high-performance computing, be it mainframe-oriented or embedded. RC technology promises to produce computing systems combining the flexibility of software-programmable computations with the computational power of custom hardware.
