Title: Towards Performant Virtualization of Floating Point Arithmetic
Speaker: Peter Dinda
Abstract: Using alternative arithmetic systems within an existing scientific codebase that is written to (and compiled for) the IEEE standard is a major challenge. The NSF CSR-supported Buoyancy Project is exploring how to address this challenge through virtualizing floating point hardware, starting on x64. The goal of the floating point virtual machine (FPVM) is to allow an existing application binary to be seamlessly extended to support the desired alternative arithmetic system with overheads determined by that system and not the virtualization mechanisms. I will describe the current FPVM trap-and-emulate-based implementation, including newly-developed kernel support that reduces one of the key overheads by 2-3x. There remains much to be done, however. If time allows, I will also touch on other aspects of the Buoyancy Project, such as evaluating user understanding of IEEE floating point, efficient monitoring of applications, and very early work on attacks specific to scientific applications.
Short Bio: Peter Dinda is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Northwestern University, and also holds an appointment in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He headed the Computer Engineering and Systems division for five years within the previous Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He holds a B.S. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Wisconsin and a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University. He works in experimental computer systems, particularly parallel and distributed systems, and has authored over 140 scientific papers, authored or is a major contributor to several large publicly available codebases, and holds five patents. His research currently involves virtualization and operating systems for distributed and parallel computing, programming languages for parallel computing, resilience of floating point arithmetic, and individualized privacy in IoT systems. He is a Fellow of the IEEE. You can find out more about him and the Buoyancy Project at pdinda.org.
