June 4, 2008 - UConn Tech Transfer Conference

Abstracts

Renzulli Learning - Professors Sally Reis and Joe Renzulli of Renzulli Learning will present their role in the company they founded. The company’s technology is based on a profiling tool that evaluates a student’s interest, aptitude and learning styles and uses the profile to pull enrichment activities from a extensive online database based on these attributes. The Company reported sales of over $3 million in 2007, a 100% increase over FY2006.

Computer Architecture - Professor and Department Head, Reda Ammar (Performance Engineering, Parallel and Distributed Computing and Real-Time Systems) Micro-Threading Framework on the Cell Broadband Engine Cell Broadband Engine (CBE) is a heterogeneous multi-core machine with unique design properties for high-performance computing. It consists of one Power Processing Element (PPE) and eight Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs) connected with the Elements Interconnect Network (EIB).

It employs novel techniques, such as software managed cache, to hide memory latency and guarantee by default maximum utilization for the overall system resources. However, in our experiments we discovered that there is still room for significant performance improvements and better ways to program such complex parallel computing environment.

In this talk we present our experiences with the CBE architecture. We have implemented a micro-threading framework managed by nano-kernels that reside on each SPE.  The main objectives of this run-time environment are: (1) Maximize CBE performance through efficient utilization and scheduling of resources; and (2) Make it easier to program CBE through automated, yet efficient, cache management.  We have obtained some interesting performance improvements. We consider our findings a starting point for new ways to manage inherit latency and data synchronization problems in the context of parallel applications composed of relatively large number of collaborating threads.

Algorithms - Professor Sanguthevar Rajasekaran "General Sorting Techniques".Abstract: Sorting is a fundamental problem of computing that plays a critical role in many applications. This is a well studied problem. We have developed optimal sorting techniques for various architectures including the IBM Cell, PRAMs, the mesh, etc. One of our recent algorithms for disk sorting outperforms the Unix sorting technique. In this talk we present an overview of our contributions in the area of sorting.

Encryption, Wireless Security - Assistant Professor Aggelos Kiayias, Security for Computer Systems This will be a short overview of recent projects and R&D with subjects that cover various aspects of computer security spanning digital rights management and copyright protection, security of electronic voting systems and security and privacy in networks. (Cryptography, Computational Complexity, Combinatorics, Coding Theory)