The Quest for Energy-Aware Computing: Confessions of an Accidental Engineer

Abstract

As a professor of electrical and computer engineering, I consider myself lucky and privileged to educate wonderful undergraduate students, do cutting edge research with exceptional graduate students, and work or collaborate with outstanding colleagues. To be able to reflect on the past and project how we can shape our future, we must unequivocally connect to where we started, in the “why” that makes us move forward when we succeed but most importantly, when we do not. I am a computer engineer, but have become one—or perhaps, even a better one—not despite but because I have started as a potential math major in my teenage years, yet turned to be a computer science graduate. It was when I delved through my computer engineering PhD degree that I put together the beauty of math with the theoretical grounding of computer science, and their direct application to solving concrete engineering problems. This has guided and continues to guide my research, the engineering problems I choose to solve, and the approach I identify for their solution. My work as a researcher for the better part of my career has centered on making computing systems more energy efficient, by adapting them to the applications they run, the users they have, or the environment they operate in. Today, our children and even us take these systems for granted: our phones, smart consumer electronics, or cars all rely on systems that carry more (in fact thousands of times more) computing power than ENIAC, the first computer ever built 70 years ago. I am proud to have been part of the generation that has built the tools that enabled this amazing trend that allows us today to have more smart devices than humans that live on this planet. I am not only proud to have contributed to this inspiring quest but also lucky to have been contemporary to the unprecedented growth and ubiquity of electronic devices. Nevertheless, my path was unlike the vast majority of engineers or scientists you may know.