Abstract :

EEnergy is one of the most valuable and scarce resources, a significant portion of which is now being consumed to power up computers and their accessories. Energy and cooling are the two of the biggest issues facing IT organization today and a growing number of companies need ways to curb these costs while enabling future expansions. A side effect is an escalating threat to the environment. However, energy saving usually comes at the expense of performance. In this talk, we give an overview of our research activities related to various aspect of energy and performance optimization, as well as their trade- offs. We address several research issues in power-aware computing at various levels, such as system, software, and algorithm.

The extensive computational requirements of various applications on grids make energy a critical resource in their execution. We propose scheduling algorithms and tools that can be used by grid managers or service providers to save energy while ensuring performance. The design of such algorithms and resource management schemes poses new research challenges because they must deal with the dynamic nature of the grid and task-to-machine matching requirements, while considering complex service policy issues as well as both short term and long-term energy goals. We propose game theory based scheduling algorithms that optimize both energy and quality of service. Our game theoretic techniques not only yield efficient solutions for this problem with low overhead, but are also flexible to self-tune for accommodating various problem scenarios and management policies.

Biography :

Ishfaq Ahmad received a B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Engineering and Technology, Pakistan, in 1985, and an MS degree in Computer Engineering and a PhD degree in Computer Science from Syracuse University, New York, U.S.A., in 1987 and 1992, respectively. He is currently a professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). At UTA, he leads the Multimedia Laboratory and the Institute for Research in Security (IRIS). IRIS, an inter-disciplinary research center spanning several departments, is engaged in research on advanced technologies for homeland security and law enforcement. Professor Ahmad is known for his research contributions in parallel and distributed computing, grid computing, multimedia computing, video compression, and security. His work in these areas is published in close to 200 technical papers in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. He is a recipient of numerous awards, which include three best paper awards at leading conferences and 2007 best paper award for IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, IEEE Service Appreciation Award, and 2008 Outstanding Area Editor Award from the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology. His current research is funded by the Department of Justice, National Science Foundation and industry. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, IEEE Distributed Systems Online, and Cluster Computing. He is guest editing a special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems on focusing on Power-Aware Parallel and Distributed Systems (PAPADS). He is also guest editing a special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology focusing on Video Surveillance. In recognition of his contributions in parallel and distributed computing, he became a Fellow of the IEEE in 2008.