Krste Asanovic, Director of the ASPIRE Lab, has been named a 2014 IEEE Fellow.  He is being recognized for his contributions to Computer Architecture.  The full list of Fellows can be seen Here.  Congratulations Krste!

We welcome Samsung to the ASPIRE lab as an industrial affiliate.  Samsung is interested in future energy-efficient computing and storage platforms at all scales.

Congratulations to Edgar for winning the ACM/IEEE-CS George Michael Memorial
HPC Fellowship, awarded at Supercomputing’13 last week:
http://www.computer.org/portal/web/awards/ACM/IEEE-CS-George-Michael-Fellowship

The ASPIRE project is looking for a talented software engineer to support all aspects of the project, but with a focus on our SEJITS tools, which turn high-level application code into optimized low-level code and even into specialized hardware.

You’ll work with faculty and student researchers and scientists to create, enhance, maintain, and distribute (we’re all about open source) the tools that will enable energy-efficient hardware/software codesign.  It’s intellectually exciting and Berkeley has great employee benefits and is really convenient to BART, bikes and buses.

The position is guaranteed through September 2015.  Possibility to continue in a related position in future projects, subject to project funding availability.

Your technical profile:

• 3-5 years in the software business would be great.  A bonus if you’ve worked in a research/R&D setting before.  A double bonus if you have been an active contributor to open source projects.  Triple bonus if you have some experience with parallel programming, either multicore (threads, OpenMP, MPI) or GPU.
• Comfortable with multiple languages, and seasoned enough to apply the principles you already know to quickly learn new ones.  You’ll immediately be diving in with Python, C/C++, maybe some LLVM, maybe some Scala later.
• Strong toolsmith skills in the Unix environment but comfortable enough to acquire and use some Windows-fu or Mac-fu when needed
• Ideally, some experience working with language-engineering tools, or at least an ability to blow the dust off that compiler class you took years ago
• Demonstrated experience in modern software engineering practices, including automated testing practices, proper use of version control, agile development, working in small teams,  release management for open source.
• Excellent technical communication skills: you can explain ideas clearly, both in oral presentations and in your technical writing.

Your social & professional profile:

• Some telecommuting will be OK, but in general you’re expected to be physically around.  We have a great shared space for students, faculty & tech staff, not cubicles or closed offices.  You find this intellectually exciting because you’d rather not shut yourself in away from co-workers.  You might even get excited about the occasional team-building event with your co-workers, such as at local watering holes or restaurants.
• You’re passionate about something outside of work.  I don’t care what it is.  Flying kites, playing an instrument, whatever, but you have a life.
• You can communicate well with co-workers.  Lots of CS people are quirky, but we’re not uncommunicative!

Email Armando Fox (Google me first; you know you want to) for more info or to chat further about the position.  To see the full official job description or to apply:

1. Create an account at jobs.berkeley.edu by clicking “External Applicant”.  Once you are logged in, search for listing ID # 16650 in the Keywords field, and click Apply Now when viewing the job listing.
2. You’ll then need to upload your résumé/CV (the app doesn’t require this, but we won’t consider your application without it).   Once you upload your resume and finalize your application, you can’t change it, but if you wish to instead give the URL of an online resume you can update later, that’s fine.
3. Please be sure your résumé tells us where we can browse your code portfolio (GitHub, Google Code, Sourceforge, etc.)
4. You do not need to separately enter job history, education, references, etc.—just make sure all that info is listed on your resume.
5. Berkeley’s HR system may also require you to reveal whether you’ve been convicted of felony crimes.  Seriously.

You are invited to our Chisel 2.0 bootcamp ( and please help spread the word to your students, advisors, and colleagues ):

Date: September 30, 2013
Location: Sutardja Dai Hall @ UC Berkeley

Chisel is a new open-source hardware construction language developed at UC Berkeley that supports advanced hardware design using highly parameterized generators and layered domain specific hardware languages. Chisel is embedded in the Scala programming language, which raises the level of hardware design abstraction by providing concepts including object orientation, functional programming, parameterized types, and type inference. Chisel can generate a high-speed C++-based cycle-accurate software simulator, or low-level Verilog designed to pass on to standard ASIC or FPGA tools for synthesis and place and route.  Find out more about Chisel at:

chisel.eecs.berkeley.edu

The main objective of the Chisel bootcamp is to get groups started using the Chisel hardware design infrastructure and to learn about the 2.0 version (such as simpler types and multiple clock domains). In the bootcamp, we will describe the language features, and also how to generate fast C++ cycle simulations, Verilog for FPGA emulation, and Verilog for ASIC synthesis. Due to time and licence issues, we will focus on the C++ simulator backend for the workshop, though are happy to support groups who also want to integrate the Verilog output into their hardware design flows.

Registration

We welcome NVIDIA to the ASPIRE lab as an industrial affiliate.  NVIDIA is interested in improving the efficiency and programmability of heterogeneous computing platforms at all scales, from mobile platforms to datacenters to supercomputers.

“The Berkeley Par Lab: Progress in the Parallel Computing Landscape” is a book comprising a collection of papers and essays from the Berkeley Parallel Computing Laboratory, which was the predecessor to the ASPIRE Lab.  The book is now available for download from the Microsoft Research site.

Intel has joined the ASPIRE lab at the industrial sponsor level.  Intel was also a major sponsor of the Parallel Computing Laboratory, in which several of the technical components of the ASPIRE lab were developed, and we welcome the chance to continue our deep collaboration on programming models for future specialized and heterogeneous computing architectures.