Ming Liu has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Early Career Development Award (CAREER) for his project, “Rethinking Rack-Scale System Design over Memory Fabrics.”
“Scalable computing infrastructures are far more important in the era of AI and are becoming a key technology enabler,” says Liu. Memory fabric, an emerging and powerful cluster interconnect technology, is revolutionizing the construction of modern data centers. Liu says that although this is promising, “this infrastructure shift fundamentally changes our decade-long system design assumptions and challenges conventional wisdom on how to build efficient rack-scale systems.”
Liu’s project will rethink the rack-scale system design from memory, computing, and communication perspectives. The project will also impact education, and Liu will create an undergraduate course on infrastructure composability (under the LegoCluster program) and a graduate-level course on memory fabrics.
“This award will democratize an emerging cluster interconnect technology,” says Liu. “More importantly, given the explosive growth of ML/AI services, increasing data volumes, and the rising crises on energy consumption, it facilitates us to rethink how to architect next-generation high-performance, cost-efficient, and sustainable computing infrastructures.”
CAREER Awards support early-faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their organization.
Congratulations, Professor Liu!