Michael Huang Wins NSF CAREER Award

Assistant Professor Michael Huang of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has won a $350,000 CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support his research into a computer architecture design that improves computer speed by decoupling performance from correct instruction execution. The Award is one of the most prized honors that a young faculty member can receive and recognizes a strong commitment to both innovative research and teaching.

The goal of Huang's five-year CAREER project is to separate circuitry that will make a computer chip operate quickly from circuitry that will guarantee that the execution of an instruction is correct. Huang calls his solution, explicitly-decoupled architecture: he intends to physically separate performance and correctness domains in the whole system stack, from the software down to the transistors.

As Huang points out, "Most of the time in real computers, what we call corner cases don't occur, yet we add safety margins and conservatively handle or avoid corner cases to ensure correctness. In general, corner cases are unlikely situations that usually involve multiple conditions all being true at the same time. Guarding against corner cases slows down the microprocessor chip. In addition, it requires that the computer consume a lot more power than needed."

For decades, processor micro-architecture has become increasingly complex and harder to improve, while clock rate growth has significantly slowed. Major chip manufacturers have turned to multiple computer cores and parallel processing to improve performance. While multi-core designs allow programmers to improve performance by rewriting sequential programs, they do not help improve performance of individual cores or threads. To do so, new paradigms are needed to reinvigorate micro-architecture designs. Assistant Professor Huang's preliminary research shows that his method could very well be the answer.

As for the educational component of the CAREER Award, Huang has taught two highly rated computer architecture courses for the past five years. One is ECE 201, Advanced Computer Architecture, which targets senior undergraduates and first-year graduate students. The other is ECE 404/CSC 451, High-Performance Microprocessor-Based Systems, which is for graduate students. Students consistently praise ECE 201 as one of the best courses in the Department. To supplement his work in these two classes, Huang is also revitalizing the introductory ECE 114 to incorporate modern architecture themes. He is the Department's graduate admissions committee chair and intends to advise at least two graduate theses based on his CAREER project.

Assistant Professor Huang joined the Department in 2002 after earning his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He also holds a joint appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science.The goal of Huang's five-year CAREER project is to separate circuitry that will make a computer chip operate quickly from circuitry that will guarantee that the execution of an instruction is correct. Huang calls his solution, explicitly-decoupled architecture: he intends to physically separate performance and correctness domains in the whole system stack, from the software down to the transistors.

As Huang points out, "Most of the time in real computers, what we call corner cases don't occur, yet we add safety margins and conservatively handle or avoid corner cases to ensure correctness. In general, corner cases are unlikely situations that usually involve multiple conditions all being true at the same time. Guarding against corner cases slows down the microprocessor chip. In addition, it requires that the computer consume a lot more power than needed."

For decades, processor micro-architecture has become increasingly complex and harder to improve, while clock rate growth has significantly slowed. Major chip manufacturers have turned to multiple computer cores and parallel processing to improve performance. While multi-core designs allow programmers to improve performance by rewriting sequential programs, they do not help improve performance of individual cores or threads. To do so, new paradigms are needed to reinvigorate micro-architecture designs. Assistant Professor Huang's preliminary research shows that his method could very well be the answer.

As for the educational component of the CAREER Award, Huang has taught two highly rated computer architecture courses for the past five years. One is ECE 201, Advanced Computer Architecture, which targets senior undergraduates and first-year graduate students. The other is ECE 404/CSC 451, High-Performance Microprocessor-Based Systems, which is for graduate students. Students consistently praise ECE 201 as one of the best courses in the Department. To supplement his work in these two classes, Huang is also revitalizing the introductory ECE 114 to incorporate modern architecture themes. He is the Department's graduate admissions committee chair and intends to advise at least two graduate theses based on his CAREER project.

Assistant Professor Huang joined the Department in 2002 after earning his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He also holds a joint appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science.

-Lois Gresh