Intel, Microsoft establish university-based parallel computing research centers

With an aim of accelerating benefits to consumers and businesses, the technology giants are establishing parallel computing center locations at UC Berkeley and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

By Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor -- Electronic News, 3/18/2008

After much anticipation, and making it the first joint industry and university research alliance in the US focused on mainstream parallel computing, technology giants Intel Corp and Microsoft Corp finally announced today their partnership with academia to create two universal parallel computing research centers (UPCRC), meant to accelerate what they said are developments in mainstream parallel computing for consumers and businesses in desktop and mobile computing.

With research to focus on advancing parallel programming applications, architecture and operating systems software, the centers will be set up at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), with the companies committing a combined $20 million to the centers over the next 5 years.

An additional $8 million will come from UIUC, and UC Berkeley is said to have applied for $7 million in funds from a state-supported program to match industry grants, the companies noted.

Parallel computing leverages advanced software and processors with multiple cores or engines, which, when combined can handle multiple instructions and tasks simultaneously, and has become essential to enhancing program performance and satisfying the increased demands for power efficiency and small form factors, the companies reminded.

The technology industry is now challenged to bring the benefits of multicore processing (based on tens or hundreds of cores) to mainstream developers and eventually to consumers with the ultimate goal of making parallel computing easier for developers by providing tools for new platform architectures, operating system architectures, programming methods and tools, and application models.

Intel and Microsoft believe the changes needed impact the entire industry, from consumers to hardware manufacturers and from the entire software development infrastructure to application developers who rely upon it.

Although many companies including Intel and Microsoft have hardware and software today that is capable of handling dual- and quad-core-based PCs, in the coming years computers will surely contain even more processors.

Andrew Chien, VP, corporate technology group and director for Intel Research explained in a statement, “Intel has already shown an 80-core research processor, and we’re quickly moving the computing industry to a many-core world.”

“Working with Microsoft and these two prestigious universities will help catalyze the long-term breakthroughs that are needed to enable dramatic new applications for the mainstream user,” he continued.

“We think these new applications will have the ability to efficiently and robustly sense and act in our everyday world with new capabilities: rich digital media and visual interfaces, powerful statistical analyses and search, and mobile applications. Ultimately, these sensing and human interface capabilities will bridge the physical world with the virtual,” Chien added.

Further, Microsoft Research’s Tony Hey, corporate VP of external research said, “Driven by the unprecedented capability of multicore processors, we’re in the midst of a revolution in the computing industry, which profoundly affects the way we develop software. Working jointly with industry and academia, we plan to explore the next generation of hardware and software to unlock the promise and the power of parallel computing and enable a change in the way people use technology.”

As part of the selection process, 25 top-tier institutions in the field of parallel computing research were evaluated, with UC Berkeley and UIUC unanimously selected for their outstanding reputation in computing and their expertise in the specific area of parallel computing among other reasons.

The UPCRC at UC Berkeley will be directed by David Patterson, professor of computer science and pioneering expert in computer architecture, and will include 14 members from the UC Berkeley faculty, as well as 50 doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers.

The UPCRC at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will be led by Marc Snir, professor of computer science and Wen-Mei Hwu, professor of electrical and computer engineering, in collaboration with 20 additional faculty members and 26 graduate students and researchers.

Software developed by the centers will be made available to the technology community for additional development, the companies asserted.

The parties said the research to be conducted is expected to complement and extend existing parallel computing programs at UC Berkeley, UIUC, Microsoft and Intel, with the centers' research agenda aligning closely with both Intel’s tera-scale computing research program and Microsoft's technical computing initiative.