{"id":32670,"date":"2019-11-01T09:04:43","date_gmt":"2019-11-01T13:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=32670"},"modified":"2024-07-02T17:12:57","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T17:12:57","slug":"jess-woods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=32670","title":{"rendered":"Undergraduate researcher helps develop data-encoding tools for future supercomputers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jess
Jess Woods (photo courtesy of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Leadership Computing Facility)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Jess Woods enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), he was sure he\u2019d pursue a degree in studio art. He loved oil painting, and it seemed like the right career path. Then he took a math class.<\/p>\n

Now, 4 years later and armed with a bachelor\u2019s degree in computer science, Woods is immersed in a project to optimize the encoding and decoding of data for future generations of supercomputers.<\/p>\n

How did abstract algebra become such an unexpectedly important part of this 22-year-old\u2019s life? It may have begun with his discovery at UNC of how much he enjoyed math, but it\u2019s found full flower at the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s (DOE\u2019s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). As part of the DOE Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) program<\/a>, Woods has been tasked at ORNL with exploring different ways of representing data and enabling operations to be performed on that transformed data.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we move to zettascale computing [1,000 exaflops], the way we store and move data around is getting harder and harder. We\u2019re kind of pushing the limits of our physics right now with how fast we can go while staying within a power envelope,\u201d Woods said. \u201cSo you can compress data and put it in a different format, and you can encode data to make it more secure. Wouldn\u2019t it be awesome if you could do operations on data encodings without having to decode it first?\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Oscar Hernandez, Ph.D., a tools developer in the lab\u2019s Computer Science Research Group who serves as Woods\u2019s mentor on the project, future high-performance computing systems will require new approaches to how data is represented to optimize memory, speed, security, and power usage. The use of parallel computing methods\u2014such as those enabled by the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility\u2019s IBM AC922 Summit supercomputer and its NVIDIA Tensor Core GPUs\u2014will be integral to speeding up the team\u2019s algorithms behind encoding and decoding data. But although these forthcoming supercomputers may use more cores, it\u2019s likely they will have less memory per core, he said.<\/p>\n

\"Jess
Jess Woods (left) and his mentor, Oscar Hernandez. (photo courtesy of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Leadership Computing Facility.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cImproving the way we\u2019re utilizing the memory in those future systems is important,\u201d Hernandez said. \u201cJess is going through the background for the mathematics to do that and exploring what will be the parallelization strategy we need to follow. At the same time, he\u2019s exploring programming models\u2014which languages to use to do these implementations and to do them efficiently.\u201d<\/p>\n

One month into the project, Woods has coded a working implementation of this scheme in Python, with C++, CUDA, and other programming languages to follow. He\u2019s started with some very simple operations\u2014addition and multiplication\u2014that can be applied to functions such as database searchs or comparisons.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, it will be interesting to have a library that we can use to encode data and perform some basic operations that we use for scientific computing and then decode the information back,\u201d Hernandez said. \u201cThe idea is to show the cost of doing that can be offset by the size of the dataset we\u2019re generating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Woods\u2019s SULI internship and experiences at ORNL have encouraged him to pursue a graduate degree in computer science and possibly a career at a national lab. Being entrusted to assist Hernandez with an important project at ORNL has given him a greater sense of confidence in his career choice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot more independent learning here,\u201d Woods said. \u201cI\u2019ve probably read more textbooks in the time that I\u2019ve been here than in an entire semester of school. I\u2019ve never done research all day every day like this, and I think that\u2019s valuable. I think it will be supremely helpful in grad school.\u201d<\/p>\n

From Hernandez\u2019s perspective, the SULI program and Woods\u2019s assistance have been assets.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey let us explore areas of research that we know are important and doable,\u201d Hernandez said. \u201cIn the case of Jess, it has broadened his scope in the context of topics that he\u2019s interested in for doing his research, and it will potentially help him find a career. For us, we know the topics he\u2019s working on\u2014data representations for either compression or security\u2014are big topics we want to explore for systems that will come in 2026 or 2030 time frames. We just need to start looking into it now, and this definitely helps get some ideas started.\u201d<\/p>\n

The SULI program is sponsored by the DOE Office of Science\u2019s Office of Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists and is administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, managed by Oak Ridge Associated Universities. The OLCF is a DOE Office of Science User Facility located at ORNL.<\/p>\n

UT-Battelle LLC manages Oak Ridge National Laboratory for DOE\u2019s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. DOE\u2019s Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https:\/\/energy.gov\/science.<\/em><\/p>\n

Story courtesy of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Leadership Computing Facility.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) program, computer science graduate Jess Woods has been tasked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory with exploring different ways of representing data and enabling operations to be performed on that transformed 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