CS Colloquium speakers Speaker: Seah Kim, University of California, Berkeley Date: Monday, March 24 Time: 12:30pm EST Location: CS 105 Host: Margaret Martonosi Event page: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/events/scalable-soc-architectures-domain-specif... Register for live-stream online here: https://princeton.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_RfmWTnaZRx63qJXOBiKJHQ Title: Scalable SoC Architectures for Domain-Specific Computing: From Algorithms to Silicon Abstract: Modern software stacks contain concurrent and heterogeneous workloads with bespoke constraints. This is especially crucial for emerging edge applications, such as AR/VR, robotics, and autonomous vehicles. In response to these demands, hardware has shifted towards pervasive specialization, making development and cross-stack integration increasingly challenging. This shift raises the pressing question at the core of modern computing: How do we enable scalable specialization in modern SoCs? How do we design and integrate heterogeneous accelerators while ensuring performance scalability through efficient resource management and adaptability across system layers? In this talk, I will present my research addressing these interconnected challenges of scalable specialization through full-stack, system approaches. (1) First, I will introduce Gemmini, an award-winning, widely used DNN accelerator generator that enables agile, full-stack accelerator evaluation. Gemmini allows researchers to explore the specialized accelerator design space under a full SoC. (2) Next, I will present AuRORA, the award-winning, novel virtualized accelerator integration approach with dynamic resource allocation, paving the foundation for accelerator-rich SoCs. AuRORA redesigns a novel CPU-accelerator interface that enables fast and flexible resource repartitioning, along with a runtime system that abstracts physical accelerators into a unified virtualized resource pool. (3) Then, I will introduce SuperNoVA, an algorithm-hardware co-design for real-time, dynamic workloads on resource-constrained platforms, using SLAM as a target workload. SuperNoVA tackles the challenge of balancing accuracy and real-time execution with an adaptive algorithm for large-scale SLAM. (4) Finally, I will showcase a silicon test chip I taped out that embodies my research by integrating these innovations. Silicon validation with real workloads successfully proves the feasibility of scalable specialization. By bridging hardware design, system software, application algorithms, and silicon validation, my research enables adaptive, accelerator-rich computing platforms for modern edge applications. I will revolutionize edge SoC design by combining design-time hardware-software co-optimization with runtime adaptive resource management, achieving the best of both static specialization and dynamic flexibility to address the evolving demands of future edge platforms. Bio: Seah Kim is a Ph.D. Candidate at UC Berkeley, specializing in Computer Architecture and VLSI. Her research spans the full computing stack, from chip design and hardware development to system software and application algorithms, with a focus on scalable domain-specific SoC design. She has been awarded the IEEE Micro Top Pick in Computer Architecture (MICRO 2023), the Best Paper Award (DAC 2021), and the Distinguished Artifact Award (ISCA 2023). Prior to UC Berkeley, she earned a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Seoul National University. Seah was selected as a 2024 Rising Star in EECS and a 2023 ML and Systems Rising Star. Speaker: Haozhi Qi, University of California, Berkeley Date: Tuesday, March 25 Time: 12:30pm EST Location: CS 105 Host: Felix Heide Event page: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/events/multisensory-dexterity-robotics Register for live-stream online here: https://princeton.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_q6wkrHb1TA2K3JuXbXL__g Title: Multisensory Dexterity for Robotics Abstract: Human hands are essential for sensing and interacting with the physical world, allowing us to grasp and manipulate objects with ease. Replicating this dexterity in robots is the key to unlocking general-purpose robotics in unstructured environments. While modern AI has achieved breakthroughs in many domains, robot dexterity remains an unsolved challenge due to the complexity of high-dimensional control, limited real-world data, and the need for rich multisensory feedback. In this talk, I will present my work on multisensory dexterity for robotics and demonstrate how robots can achieve a broad range of dexterous manipulation capabilities. First, I will introduce how robots develop dexterous manipulation using simple sensory inputs and identify the key ingredients that enable generalizable manipulation across diverse objects, with examples in in-hand and bimanual manipulation. Building on these ingredients, I will then show how integrating rich multisensory feedback—including proprioception, vision, and tactile sensing—improves both perception and control, allowing robots to perform tasks that would be impossible with simple sensors. Finally, I will conclude with future opportunities and open challenges in scaling robotic dexterity and developing robots capable of general-purpose physical interaction. Bio: Haozhi Qi is a final-year Ph.D. candidate in the EECS Department at UC Berkeley, advised by Prof. Yi Ma and Prof. Jitendra Malik. His research lies at the intersection of robot learning, computer vision, and tactile sensing, with the goal of developing physically intelligent, particularly dexterous, robots for unstructured environments. He received his B.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His work on in-hand perception was featured as the cover article in Science Robotics. He has been recognized with the Outstanding Demo Award at the NeurIPS Robot Learning Workshop and the EECS Evergreen Award for Undergraduate Researcher Mentoring. Speaker: Prof Moshe Y. Vardi, Rice University Date: Tuesday, March 25 Time: 2:00pm EST Location: CS 105 Host: Aarti Gupta Event page: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/events/what-theoretical-computer-science Register for live-stream online here: https://princeton.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Cmq0997eQn6Cv0fCXpJl2Q Title: What Is Theoretical Computer Science? Abstract: Wikipedia defines theoretical computer science (TCS) as “a subfield of computer science and mathematics that focuses on the abstract mathematical foundations of computation.” I will take issue with this definition. I believe that thinking of TCS as a branch of mathematics is harmful to the discipline. The centrality of computing stems from the fact that it is a technology that has been changing the world for the past 80 years. As computer scientists, we should look for inspiration from physics rather than from mathematics. Theoretical physics is highly mathematical, but it aims to explain and predict the real world. Theories that fail at this “explain/predict” task would ultimately be discarded. Analogously, I will argue that the role of TCS is to explain/predict real-life computing. We should remember the warning of John von Neumann, one of the greatest mathematicians and computer scientists of the 20th century, regarding the danger of mathematics driven solely by internal esthetics: “There is a grave danger that the subject will develop along the line of least resistance.” I will use Boolean reasoning as the running example to illustrate this thesis. Bio: Moshe Y. Vardi is University Professor and the George Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering at Rice University. His research focuses on the interface of mathematical logic and computation -- including database theory, hardware/software design and verification, multi-agent systems, and constraint satisfaction. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the ACM SIGACT Goedel Prize, the ACM Kanellakis Award, the ACM SIGMOD Codd Award, the Knuth Prize, the IEEE Computer Society Goode Award, and the EATCS Distinguished Achievements Award. He is the author and co-author of over 800 papers, as well as two books. He is a Guggenheim Fellow as well as fellow of several societies, and a member of several academies, including the US National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Science, and the Royal Society of London. He holds ten honorary titles. He is a Senior Editor of the Communications of the ACM, the premier publication in computing.