Sara Achour (MIT CSAIL) - New Compilation Techniques for Reconfigurable Analog Devices

New Compilation Techniques for Reconfigurable Analog Devices

Reconfigurable analog devices are a powerful new computing substrate especially appropriate for executing dynamical systems in an energy efficient manner. These devices leverage the physical behavior of transistors to directly implement computation. Under this paradigm, voltages and currents within the device implement continuously evolving variables in the computation. 

In this talk, I discuss compilation techniques for automatically configuring such devices to execute dynamical systems. I present Legno, the first compilation system that automatically targets a real reconfigurable analog device of this class. Legno synthesizes analog circuits from parametric and specialized analog blocks and accounts for analog noise, quantization error, operating range limitations, and manufacturing variations within the device. I evaluate Legno on applications from the biology, physics, and controls domains. The results demonstrate that these applications execute with acceptable error while consuming microjoules of energy. 

If you are affiliated with UChicago CS and would like to attend this talk remotely, contact rmitchum@uchicago.edu for links.

Host: Hank Hoffmann