Prof. Todd Austin was
presented with the
2007 Maurice
Wilkes Award at the 2007 International Symposium on Computer
Architecture (ISCA) Awards Banquet, "for innovative contributions in
Computer Architecture including the SimpleScalar Toolkit and the DIVA and
Razor architectures."
Prof. Austin's primary research lies in the areas of computer
architecture, VLSI design, and error-resilient design. He came to U-M from
Intel, where he led microarchitecture research efforts for future-generation
microprocessors. He is founder and president of
SuperScalar LLC. The SimpleScalar
tools are a collection of compiler, assembler, linker and simulator tools
for SimpleScalar PISA and other popular architectures. The tool set provides
researchers and educators with an easily extensible, portable,
high-performance test bed for computer system design or instruction. The
SimpleScalar tool set is in use at more than 75 universities and research
centers, and it has been the simulation infrastructure used in more than 125
systems courses and 2,600 refereed publications.
His work on the Razor architecture was recognized with a
2007 Microprocessor Report Analysts' Choice Award for Innovation, along
with his colleagues David Blaauw and Trevor Mudge who collaborated on this
project.
More recently, Prof. Austin is making news with his research on
"self-healing"
chips, called "BulletProof," in collaboration with Prof. Valeria
Bertacco. BulletProof is the name for a new approach to chip design that
will detect and correct certain errors before they affect the outcome of the
computation. The microprocessor will, in effect, heal itself. He is also
involved in a new project in low-power design called
Subliminal Systems,
in collaboration with Prof. David Blaauw. Using solar cells to scavenge
energy from the environment, they have designed a sensor platform that
consumes far less energy than any previously published sensor network
processor.
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The Maurice Wilkes Award is the top mid-career award presented by the
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in computer architecture. The
award, named after one of the 20th century's major computer pioneers, is an
annual, international award that recognizes outstanding contributions to
computer design made by an individual whose computer-related career started
fewer than 20 years ago.
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