AccelCloud: Workshop and Contest on Accelerating Big Data in Heterogeneous Cloud computing

Scope of the workshop and the contest

Currently, we see that more and more cloud operators have started deploying FPGAs and GPUs in their data centers. Amazon and Nimbix were among the first cloud providers that allowed the instantiation and utilization of FPGAs in the cloud. Currently other cloud operators like Huawei, Baidu and Alibaba offer to the users the possibility to rent and deploy FPGAs in order to speedup their applications. However, the main issue is still the programming efficiency of the FPGAs.

In this workshop we will present the most recent work on the domain of hardware accelerators in the datacenter in 3 sessions:

(a) Session 1: Invited presentations

A set of invited presentations on the latest toolboxes and technologies that are available in the market and in academia to speedup cloud applications without prior knowledge on the FPGAs. It will also present the ecosystem on the new emerging field of the acceleration-as-a-service with all the major players in this domain (Amazon AWS, Baidu, Xilinx, Intel, Accelize, etc.).

(b) Session 2: International contest on Accelerated Heterogeneous Cloud Computing

(AWARD: free travel expenses, and registration to HiPEAC 2019) .

We call for original papers on the domain of hardware accelerators in the cloud for applications like machine learning, cloud computing, data analytics, databases and enterprise applications. The submission can be a short paper (4 pages, IEEE double column-format) presenting the best ideas in the domain of heterogeneous computing and hardware accelerators for cloud computing applications like machine learning, and big data analytics (the topic can be in the domain of hardware, software and tools. The applicants are encouraged to use the available open-source frameworks from Vineyard (https://github.com/vineyard2020 ), Heterogeneity alliance (http://heterogeneityalliance.eu/catalogue-layer ) or any other open-source tool for heterogeneous architectures.

Awards: free travel expenses, and registration to attend the HiPEAC conference in Valencia VINEYARD will cover the travel expenses and the HiPEAC registration for the best 4 submissions, to attend the HiPEAC19 conference for free.

Submission deadline: December 7, 2018

Notification of the winners: December 14, 2018

Submission: Please submit your paper for the contest on the following email: contest@vineyard-h2020.eu

(c) Session 3: A summary of technologies and results from the Vineyard project on energy-efficient Accelerator-based Heterogeneous Data Centers.

Topics for Session include - Energy-efficient servers - Novel hardware accelerators (or accelerator ensembles) in data centers - Hardware accelerators for machine learning, data analytics, databases, scientific computing, informatics and finance - Reconfigurable computing for customized servers - Application benchmarks for embedded-based servers - Programming frameworks for energy-efficient servers - Run-time system software - Novel server architectures, system software and testbeds for near-data computing

Workshop and Contest organizer: VINEYARD H2020

General Chairs: Christoforos Kachris, ICCS

Contest Chair: Christos Kozanitis, FORTH

Program Chairs: Dimitrios Soudris, ICCS