Krishna.V.Palem
Birth date1963 (age 63–64)
FieldsAlgorithms, Applied Mathematics
Computer architecture, Circuits
Compilers, Devices
Embedded Computing
Physics
Quantum Computing
WorkplacesRice University, US
NYU, US
Georgia Institute of Technology, US
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Alma materUniversity of Texas at Austin
National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli
AwardsW. Wallace McDowell Award, Fellow AAAS, ACM, IEEE, Guggenheim Fellow, Moore Scholar at Caltech.

Krishna V. Palem is a computer scientist known for pioneering work in probabilistic and inexact computing, fields that explore the trade-off between strict computational precision and gains in energy efficiency and scalability. His research has influenced approaches to energy-aware computing, embedded systems, and scalable architectures for artificial intelligence. He has held academic and visiting appointments at institutions including New York University Courant, Rice University, Georgia Tech, Caltech, and the Hebrew University. Prior to academia, his career started at IBM. In 2022, Palem founded Accelequant, a venture-backed company focused on technology platforms for hybrid classical/quantum computing systems, and is currently its CEO. The company aims to accelerate the time to delivery of Quantum Commercial advantage, through its platform initially supporting applications in Optimization and Machine Learning.

Education

Palem obtained his Master of Science (Biomedical Engineering) and a PhD degree (Electrical and Computer Engineering) from the University of Texas at Austin.[1]

Career and Academia

Palem started his career in 1986 as a research staff member at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center at IBM where he worked on probabilistic algorithms[2] and Optimizing Compilers[3] till 1994. During this period, he also served as an advanced technology consultant at IBM's Santa Teresa Laboratory.

In 1994, Palem joined the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU as an associate professor, where he worked on compiler technologies and embedded computing systems. In 2000, he moved to the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he held professorships in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science, and served as Director of the Center for Research in Embedded Systems and Technology. In 1999, he co-founded Proceler Inc., an Atlanta-based venture-funded company focused on commercializing research in architecture assembly for productive application development on FPGA platforms.

In 2006–2007, Palem was a Moore Distinguished Faculty Fellow at the California Institute of Technology. During this period, he also held visiting and invited academic appointments, including serving as Canon Visiting Professor at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore and as an invited professor at École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris, France.

In 2006–2007, Palem joined Rice University as the inaugural Kenneth and Audrey Kennedy Professor of Computing, with joint appointments in Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Statistics. During his tenure at Rice (2007–2022), he conducted research in what has become the field of inexact computing. He also served as Director of the Rice University Center for Computing at the Margins from 2015 to 2022.

In 2022, Palem founded Accelequant, Inc., a technology company focused on developing software platforms that improve the scalability and reliability of existing quantum computing systems for deploying commercially relevant applications by leveraging existing quantum computing hardware. The company builds on his prior research in probabilistic and inexact computing to address limitations in classical hardware systems by computing in the presence of noise and other uncertainties.

Research

After he moved to NYU in 1994, Palem founded and headed one of the earliest computer science laboratories in academia on the topic of embedded computing called Real-time Compilation Technologies and Instruction Level Parallelism (ReaCT-ILP) within the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.[4] His views expressed in 1996 suggesting the "need for programming tools and software support to eventually compile algorithms implemented in standard and widely used languages such as C onto the hardware platforms" [5] was the mission statement of this laboratory. His PhD advisee Suren Talla's dissertation on this topic, 'Adaptive EPIC Architectures and their Compilers', was awarded the Janet Fabri prize.[6]

Palem fully developed this concept through 'architecture assembly' [7] through Proceler Inc.[8] Architecture assembly [9] was the foundation of the product offering by Proceler Inc. and was first documented in a patent that Proceler Inc. filed in 2002.[10] Architecture assembly produced custom hardware having pre-synthesized computing elements readily available, and using a compiler to rapidly choose and assemble an application specific and therefore a Dynamically VAriable Instruction SeT Architecture (DVAITA).[11][10] The Analysts' Choice Awards recognized this technology as one of the four nominees for the category of Outstanding technology of 2001.[7] Speaking about this award nomination, Max Baron, the editor-in-chief of Microprocessor report, said that this technology "may develop or be reborn into variants that can change our view of configurable processors, extensions of instruction sets, hardware interpreters, and application-specific accelerators."[7]

Under Palem's direction, the React-ILP laboratory developed the TRIMARAN system,[12][13] co-developed with the CAR group of HP Labs and the Impact project[14] of the University of Illinois, and was aimed at helping universities conduct research on the then emerging EPIC technology embodied in the Itanium processor.[15]

Since 2002, Palem has been developing the thermodynamic foundations [16][17] for radically new ways of approaching the challenge of lowering energy consumption by trading computational accuracy. The implementation of this principle in the context of CMOS devices lead to the invention of a widely known patented technology called the Probabilistic CMOS (PCMOS),[18][19][20] which Technology Review published by MIT recognized as one of the 10 technologies that are "most likely to change the way we live", in 2008.[21] PCMOS was shown to be useful in designing energy and power efficient architectures by his group.[22] Logic and arithmetic being the building blocks of such architectures, PCMOS motivated a new Probabilistic Boolean Logic (PBL) [23] and its arithmetic,[24] which Palem developed with his PhD advisee Lakshmi Chakrapani, whose dissertation received the Sigma-Xi best PhD thesis award.[25] PCMOS technology has also been favorably reviewed in the press recently [26][27][28] when a chip for encryption that was 30 times more energy efficient was announced at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in February 2009.[29]

Since 2008, Palem has also been a Baker Institute Rice Scholar and has been pursuing embedded computing and PCMOS technology based applications of benefit to society, particularly through the I-Slate as an educational tool for resource constrained societies. This project is being pursued in Southern India in collaboration with the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad and ISNE at Nanyang Technological University.[30] As a part of their 125th anniversary, IEEE recognized I-Slate as one of the seven "Technologies That Will Change the Way Humans Interact with Machines, the World and Each Other".[31] Since 2015, his research focused on solving fundamental complexity questions in classical and quantum computing setting.[32]

Awards and fellowships

References

  1. ^ "Krishna Palem, Professor at Rice University (Resume)". Rice University
  2. ^ Zvi M. Kedem; Krishna V. Palem; Michael O. Rabin; A. Raghunathan. "Efficient Program Transformations for Resilient Parallel Computation via Randomization". ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, 1992.
  3. ^ Krishna Palem & Barbara B. Simons (1993). "Scheduling time-critical instructions on RISC machines". ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems. 15 (4): 632–658. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS, 1993. doi:10.1145/155183.155190
  4. ^ "NYU Lab Is Making Smart Devices Smarter". NYU Public Affairs.
  5. ^ Krishna V. Palem (1997). "End-to-end Solutions for Reconfigurable Systems: The Programming Gap and Challenges". Proceedings of the Thirtieth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Vol. 1. 30th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) Volume 1: Software Technology and Architecture, 1997. pp. 714–715. doi:10.1109/HICSS.1997.667456. ISBN 978-0-8186-7743-4. S2CID 20125814
  6. ^ "School of Engineering adds twelve new faculty". Rice University. Archived from the original on 2011-07-20. Retrieved 2009-12-27.
  7. ^ Max Baron. "TECHNOLOGY 2001: ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER". Microprocessor Report – The Insider Guide to Microprocessor Hardware.
  8. ^ Richard Goering. "C design goes 'soft'". EETimes.
  9. ^ Krishna Palem. "C-based architecture assembly supports custom design". EETimes.
  10. ^ K. V. Palem; H. Patel; S. Yalamanchili. "An Instruction Set Architecture to Aid Code Generation for Hardware Platforms Having Multiple Heterogeneous Functional Units". US Serial No. 09/715,578, November 2000.
  11. ^ Bernard Cole. "Design system compiles silicon straight from C code". EETimes.
  12. ^ "An Infrastructure for Research in Backend Compilation and Architecture Exploration". TRIMARAN Group.
  13. ^ "NYU Computer Lab Is Working On Challenge Of Bringing EPIC Technology To Embedded Systems". Science Blog.
  14. ^ "The IMPACT Research Group". The IMPACT Research Group.
  15. ^ "HP, University of Illinois and New York University Provide Advanced EPIC Compiler Research Infrastructure to Universities". freelibrary.com.
  16. ^ Krishna V. Palem. "Proof as Experiment:Probabilistic Algorithms from a Thermodynamic Perspective". Proceedings of the Intl. Symposium on Verification (Theory and Practice), 2003. Archived from the original on 2011-06-07. Retrieved 2010-01-01.
  17. ^ Krishna V. Palem. "Energy Aware Algorithm Design via Probabilistic Computing: From Algorithms and Models to Moore's Law and Novel (Semiconductor) Devices". Proceedings of the Intl. Conference on Compilers, Architecture and Synthesis for Embedded Systems (CASES), 2003.
  18. ^ Krishna V. Palem; Suresh Cheemalavagu; Pinar Korkmaz; Bilge E. Akgul. "PROBABILISTIC AND INTROVERTED SWITCHING TO CONSERVE ENERGY IN A DIGITAL SYSTEM". United States Patent 7290154.
  19. ^ Suresh Cheemalavagu; Pinar Korkmaz; Krishna V. Palem. "Ultra Low-energy Computing via Probabilistic Algorithms and Devices: CMOS Device Primitives and the Energy-Probability Relationship". SSDM 2004.
  20. ^ Pinar Korkmaz; Bilge E. S. Akgul; Krishna V. Palem; Lakshmi N. Chakrapani. "Advocating Noise as an Agent for Ultra Low-Energy Computing: Probabilistic CMOS Devices and Their Characteristics". Japanese Journal of Applied Physics. Archived from the original on 2010-06-06. Retrieved 2010-01-01.
  21. ^ "Probabilistic Chips". MIT Technology Review. Technology Review published by MIT
  22. ^ Lakshmi N. Chakrapani; Bilge E. S. Akgul; Suresh Cheemalavagu; Pinar Korkmaz; Krishna V. Palem; Balasubramanian Seshasayee. "Ultra Efficient Embedded SOC Architectures based on Probabilistic CMOS (PCMOS) Technology". Design Automation and Test in Europe Conference (DATE), 2006. Archived from the original on 2011-06-07. Retrieved 2010-01-01.
  23. ^ Lakshmi N. Chakrapani & Krishna V. Palem. "A Probabilistic Boolean Logic and its Meaning". Rice University, Department of Computer Science Technical Report, June 2008. Archived from the original on 2011-06-07. Retrieved 2010-01-01.
  24. ^ Lakshmi N.B. Chakrapani; Kirthi Krishna Muntimadugu; Avinash Lingamneni; Jason George; Krishna V. Palem. "Highly Energy and Performance Efficient Embedded Computing Through Approximately Correct Arithmetic: A Mathematical Foundation and Preliminary Experimental Validation". International conference on Compilers, Architectures, and Synthesis for Embedded Systems, (CASES) 2008. Archived from the original on 2011-06-07. Retrieved 2010-01-01.
  25. ^ Department of ECE. "Chakrapani wins Sigma Xi Best PhD Thesis Award (March 2009)". Rice University
  26. ^ "Professor works to revolutionize computer chips". Houston Chronicle. 2009-02-08.
  27. ^ Higginbotham, Stacey (2009-02-09). "Brave New Chip For a Brave New Wireless Future". New York Times. Retrieved 2010-05-07.
  28. ^ Fahey, Jonathan (2009-02-26). "A Chip That Is Probably Right". Forbes. Archived from the original on 2012-07-31.
  29. ^ ISSCC. "ISSCC Program". International Solid-State Circuits Conference
  30. ^ Krishna Palem; Al Barr; Avinash Lingamneni; Vincent Mooney; Rajeswari Pingali; Harini Sampath; Jayanthi Sivaswamy. "I-Slate, Ethnomathematics and Rural Education". IEEE Conference on Technologies for Humanitarian Challenges, 2009. Archived from the original on 2011-06-07. Retrieved 2009-12-27.
  31. ^ "IEEE 125th Anniversary media roundtable". IEEE. Archived from the original on 2009-05-29. Retrieved 2010-01-01.
  32. ^ Palem, Krishna; Pham, Duc Hung; Rao, M. V. Panduranga (2022-07-26). "Quantum learning of concentrated Boolean functions". Quantum Information Processing. 21 (7): 256. Bibcode:2022QuIP...21..256P. doi:10.1007/s11128-022-03607-5. ISSN 1573-1332. S2CID 251190150
  33. ^ "Computing experts unveil superefficient 'inexact' chip". Rice University
  34. ^ Avinash Lingamneni; Kirthi Krishna Muntimadugu; Christian Enz; Richard M Karp; Krishna Palem; Christian Piguet (2012). "Algorithmic Methodologies for Ultra-efficient Inexact Architectures for Sustaining Technology Scaling". Proceedings of the 9th conference on Computing Frontiers. ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers (CF 2012), 2012. pp. 3–12. doi:10.1145/2212908.2212912. ISBN 978-1-4503-1215-8.
  35. ^ "ARCS 2012". ARCS.
  36. ^ "18 Indian Minds Who Are Doing Cutting Work". Forbes India
  37. ^ "AAAS fellows". AAAS. Archived from the original on January 13, 2012.
  38. ^ "Past recipients for W. Wallace McDowell Award". IEEE Computer Society. Archived from the original on 2011-10-02. Retrieved 2009-12-27.
  39. ^ "New Faculty". California Institute of Technology.
  40. ^ "ACM fellows". ACM. Archived from the original on 2009-10-03. Retrieved 2010-01-01.
  41. ^ "IEEE fellows". IEEE. Archived from the original on April 15, 2013.
  42. ^ "Krishna.V.Palem". Rice University Computer Science.
  43. ^ "Rice's Krishna Palem wins Guggenheim Fellowship"