Keynotes

Wednesday, April 10

09:00 - 10:30 Keynote: From Advanced Instrumentation Towards Supercomputing

Andres Cicuttin – International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN)

Summary:

The increasing complexity of scientific instrumentation often requires embedded computational capacity to simultaneously perform different tasks and also to provide dynamic adaptation to different experimental conditions. In fact FPGAs have been playing an important role in large systems for massive high-performance data acquisition and processing as in modern particle physics experiments. Large sets of interconnected FPGAs provide high computational capabilities which could be exploited for scientific computing well beyond its primary scope for instrumentation. By approaching FPGA-based supercomputing from the digital design point of view it is possible to conceive novel computational strategies different than those associated with the dominant paradigm based on microprocessor centric architectures. We will analyze some of the main problems related to fine-grained reconfigurable computing based on FPGA and we will discuss possible opportunities for open and multidisciplinary collaborations to efficiently exploit modern hybrid FPGA devices for scientific supercomputing.

Short Bio:

Andres Cicuttin obtained his degree of Graduated in Physics, National University of La Plata, Argentina, 1992, and Laurea in Fisica recognised by the National University of Trieste, Italy, 1993. His present positions are Technical Assistant at the Multidisciplinary Laboratory of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics and Associate Researcher at the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN). His main interests are in the field of high performance data processing for interdisciplinary experimental research. He has also organized and directed numerous international workshops on programmable logic devices for scientific instrumentation and high education.

Wednesday, April 10

14:00 - 15:00 Keynote: Some Key Trends in the Networked use of FPGAs

Gustavo Sutter - Universidad Autonoma de Madrid

Summary:

In today´s technologies everything is connected. The aggregation of wire and wireless communications generates an ever-growing amount of traffic. FPGA technology comes to the rescue to solve some of challenges in today’s computer interconnected world.

At datacenter level, 100 Gbits/s is becoming mainstream and near future the terabit per seconds interconnection will arrive. At these rate, the huge volume of data makes it very difficult to perform online analyses or to store traffic for subsequent forensic investigations. It is therefore mandatory to carry out some kind of filtering and/or capping in the network traffic to be analyzed. However, such a large line rate calls for custom hardware solutions.

Additionally, key application with high bandwidth requirements such as High Resolution Video (HD, 4K, 8K, etc) processing, machine learning, data mining, etc, can take advantage of the possibility to compute “near the network interface”. That is process directly the packets from the network with lowest latency, at line rate without the need to intermediate storage. High speed interconnection and highly parallel computing architectures permit tackle unprecedented computing problems with FPGA.

On the other hand, the Edge-Computing is another remarkable application of FPGAs in this interconnected world. In this case the interest of reconfigurable hardware is its inherent computing power in order to reduce dramatically the amount of data to be transmitted. The adaptiveness, high throughput, low latency and energy-efficiency of FPGA make it an excellent solution to solve, for instance, artificial intelligence applications (voice/ video recognition, failure detection, etc.) directly near the client.

In this talk, we will focus on main challenges and opportunities to use FPGA processing for traffic classifications, on the fly computing and some applications on Edge-Computing.

Thursday, April 11

9:00 - 10:00 Keynote: IoT – oportunidades y desafíos para la Región

Victor Grimblatt - Synopsys

Abstract:

IoT is dramatically changing the world as it is one of the pillars of the 4th Industrial revolution. The participation of our region in the IoT market is quite low so far and according the international consulting firms, it is not going to change in the next few years. What are we doing to revert this situation? ¿Do we understand IoT potential and how to apply it in our region? ¿Do we understand how IoT works and which are its components?

This talk will start with an overview of IoT and its components, analyzing it from the prototype point of view and the final production point of view. In the second part of the talk we will analyze the application domains where IoT can be applied. In the third part we will analyze different architectures for IoT and how to choose the right one based on the application. We will conclude talking about the challenges for the region.

Short Bio:

Victor Grimblatt was born in Viña del Mar, Chile. He has an engineering diploma in microelectronics from Institut Nationale Polytechnique de Grenoble (INPG - France) and an electronic engineering diploma from Universidad Técnica Federico Santa Maria (Chile). Currently, he is R&D Group Director and General Manager of Synopsys Chile, leader in Electronic Design Automation. He opened the Synopsys Chile R&D Center in 2006. Before joining Synopsys, he worked for different Chilean and multinational companies, such as Motorola Semiconductors, Honeywell Bull, VLSI Technology Inc., and Compass Design Automation Inc. He started to work in EDA in 1988 in VLSI Technology Inc. where he developed synthesis tools being one of the pioneers of this new technology. From 2006 to 2008 he was member of the "Chilean Offshoring Committee" organized by the Minister of Economy of Chile. In 2010 he was awarded as "Innovator of the Year in Services Export". In 2012 he was nominated for to best engineer of Chile award. He is also member of several Technical Program Committees on Circuit Design and Embedded Systems. Since 2012 he is chair of the IEEE Chilean chapter of the CASS. He also teaches several courses at Universidad de Chile and Universidad de los Andes related to integrated circuits and Computer Architecture.

Thursday, April 11

14:00 - 15:00 Keynote: Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration

Julio Daniel Dondo - Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha / Universidad Nacional de San Luis

Summary:

Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration is a very interesting characteristic of Xilinx FPGAs that offers new benefits to the design space exploration. Is this talk several approaches for dynamic partial reconfiguration techniques will be described as well as different applications that can be benefited from this characteristic.

Short bio:

Julio Daniel Dondo has received the Electrical and Electronic Engineering degree and the Master degree from National University of San Luis-Argentina, and the Ph.D. from University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. He has been working as a full professor in National University of San Luis, Argentina till 2009. Currently he is working as a Professor and Researcher at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. His research fields are Embedded Systems, FPGA-Based grid computing for HPC, heterogeneous hw/sw systems, Dynamically Reconfigurable Systems.

Friday, April 12

9:00 - 11:00 Keynote: Pipelining Fundamentals in FPGA

Eduardo Boemo - Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

Summary:

This seminar reviews the historical milestones and the main concepts of pipelining. Although the technique emerged in the 1960s, it remains as the direct way to simultaneously increase performance and reduce power in digital systems. However, the efficiency of the pipelining is modulated by the peculiarity of modern integrated circuits: the predominance of routing delays. The keynote analyzes the main aspects of pipelines, such as the area-time-power trade-off, the technological limits, and synchronization faults. These topics are particularized to LUT-based FPGA technology.