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Carl Pearson

Electrical and Computer Engineering Ph.D. Candidate

University of Illinois

Biography

I am a PhD candidate in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a member of the IMPACT Research Group led by Wen-Mei Hwu.

I am working on multi-GPU communication and scaling as part of the joint UIUC / IBM C3SR cognitive computing systems research center. The focus of these activities is to apply tools and techniques developed in the IMPACT group to improve the performance of real-world applications.

Interests

  • High-Performance Computing
  • GPU Communication
  • Application Acceleration

Education

  • MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2018

    University of Illinois

  • BSc with High Distinction in Engineering, 2013

    Harvey Mudd College

Recent Publications

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At-Scale Sparse Deep Neural Network InferenceWith Efficient GPU Implementation

This paper presents GPU performance optimization and scaling results for inference models of the Sparse Deep Neural Network Challenge …
PDF Code Slides

Node-Aware Stencil Communication on Heterogeneous Supercomputers

High-performance distributed computing systems increasingly feature nodes that have multiple CPU sockets and multiple GPUs. The …
PDF Code Project Slides

Accelerating Sparse Deep Neural Networks on FPGAs

Deep neural networks (DNNs) have been widely adopted in many domains, including computer vision, natural language processing, and …
PDF

Update on k-truss Decomposition on GPU

In this paper, we present an update to our previous submission on k-truss decomposition from Graph Challenge 2018. For single GPU …
PDF Slides

Update on Triangle Counting on GPU

This work presents an update to the triangle-counting portion of the subgraph isomorphism static graph challenge. This work is …
PDF Poster
See all publications

Recognition

E. A. Reid Fellowship

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Sep 2019 – Jun 2020

Student Innovation Award for Update on k-truss Decomposition on GPU

GraphChallenge Aug 2019

Honorable Mention for Update on Static Graph Challenge on GPU

GraphChallenge Aug 2019

Best Paper and ACM Artifact Evaluation Stamp for Evaluating CUDA Communication Primitives on High-Bandwidth Interconnects

International Conference on Performance Engineering Apr 2019

Dan Vivoli Endowed Fellowship

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Sep 2018 – Jun 2019

Finalist

GraphChallenge Sep 2018

Mavis Future Faculty Fellowship

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Sep 2017 – Jun 2018

Top-20 Poster

Nvidia GPU Technology Conference May 2017 – May 2017

Teacher Ranked as Excellent by Students

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Sep 2015

Recent & Upcoming Talks

Using Nsight Compute and Nsight Systems

Introduction and walkthrough of Nvidia Nsight Compute and Nsight Systems profiling tools.
Apr 16, 2020 University of Illinois
Project Slides Video

Optimizing Communication for CPU/GPU Nodes

Optimizing Multi-GPU Stencil Communication
Mar 11, 2020 9:00 AM — 10:00 AM Sandia National Labs
PDF Project

Node-Aware Stencil Communication for Heterogeneous Supercomputers

Optimizing Multi-GPU Stencil Communication
Feb 28, 2020 2:00 PM — 3:00 PM Coordinated Science Lab 216
Project Slides

Benchmarking CUDA Communication Primitives on High-Bandwidth Interconnects

Data-intensive applications such as machine learning and analytics have created a demand for faster interconnects to avert the memory …

May 11, 2019 12:00 AM Online
Project

Evaluating Characteristics of CUDA Communication Primitives on High-Bandwidth Interconnects

Data-intensive applications such as machine learning and analytics have created a demand for faster interconnects to avert the memory …

Mar 26, 2019 12:00 AM Mumbai, India
Project Slides
See all talks

Industry Experience

 
 
 
 
 

Treasurer

University YMCA

Aug 2019 – Present Urbana, IL
Community member of the board of governors, serving as the chair of the budget committee, the Treasurer, and on the Bailey Scholarship steering committee.
 
 
 
 
 

Research Intern

IBM

Aug 2018 – Dec 2018 T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY
 
 
 
 
 

Research Intern for Optimized CLOUD Systems

IBM

Jun 2017 – Sep 2017 T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY
 
 
 
 
 

Research Intern

MulticoreWare, Inc.

Jun 2015 – Sep 2015 Champaign, IL
 
 
 
 
 

Research Intern

MulticoreWare, Inc.

Jun 2014 – Sep 2014 Champaign, IL
 
 
 
 
 

Co-op Engineer Floating-Point RTL

AMD

Jun 2013 – Sep 2013 Fort Collins, CO
 
 
 
 
 

Co-op Engineer Floating-Point RTL

AMD

Jun 2012 – Sep 2012 Fort Collins, CO

Projects

*
All C3SR IMPACT Personal

CUDA Profiling Resources

Examples, Docker images, walkthroughs, and lectures for Nvidia’s profiling tools

Stencil Library

A CUDA+MPI stencil library with automatic data placement and optimized multi-GPU communication,

graph-datasets

A cross-platform cli app for managing graph datasets

nim-murmurhash

The nim murmurhash package: a pure-nim Murmurhash implementation

GPU Neural Network for GPGPUSim

A from-scratch feed-forward network in CUDA 4.0 suitable for GPGPUSim

High-Performance Application Studies

Tools and Techniques for Code Acceleration

GPU Continuous Integration with Azure Pipelines

Graph Library

Accelerating Static Graph Operations

Scope

GPU Microbenchmarking

Teaching Tools

Software to support GPU programming classes

Academic Experience

Teaching

  • 2018 Spring University of Illinois Project TA for ECE408/CS483
  • 2017 Fall University of Illinois Head TA for ECE408/CS483
  • 2017-2018 University of Illinois Mavis Future Faculty Fellow.
  • 2015 Fall University of Illinois TA for ECE408

I have been a teaching assistant for the following courses:

  • ECE408/CS483: Heterogeneous Parallel Programming at the University of Illinois
  • E155: Microprocesser-based Systems: Design & Applications at Harvey Mudd College
  • E85: Digital Electronics and Computer Architecture at Harvey Mudd College

I have also been a teaching assistant for the Programming and Tuning Massively Parallel Systems (PUMPS) summer school in Barcelona since 2014.

I have also mentored undergraduates and a high school student, who is a co-author on two papers.

During the Mavis fellowship, I administered the ECE 408 GPU programming project in spring 2018. I created

  • Four lectures on machine learning ( 1, 2, 3, 4)
  • A course project where students add a GPU convolution operator to MXNet.
  • Project kickoff slides ( repo).

I also created a set of resources on using Nvidia’s Nsight Compute and Nsight Systems performance profiling tools, including a 75 minute recorded lecture. See the Github repository to get started.

Patents

Web-based method for physical object delivery though use of 3d printing technology

United States 20140122579 Nov 2012

Recent Posts

Improving MPI_Pack performance in CUDA-aware MPI

Improving CUDA-Aware MPI_Pack speed by 300,000x. Code available.
Last updated on Oct 9, 2020

Nsight Systems and Nsight Compute Teaching Resources

I was invited to give a guest lecture for the Spring 2020 ECE 408 GPU programming course at the University of Illinois. This lecture covers some performance measurement techniques available in CUDA. The 75 minute lecture, available on Youtube in four parts: Slides (pdf) Part 1: Intro Part 2: CUDA Events Part 3: Nsight Compute Part 4: Nsight Systems There is also a repository cwpearson/nvidia-performance-tools which contains all the code examples used in the lecture.
Last updated on Apr 16, 2020

PUMPS+AI 2019 Summer School

TA at PUMPS+AI 2019
Last updated on Jun 26, 2019

Self-host GPU Continuous Integration with Azure Piplines and Docker!

Host your own GPU continuous integration pipeline with a bit of Python, Docker, and Azure Pipelines
Last updated on May 20, 2019

Best Paper award at ICPE!

Best research track paper at ICPE
Last updated on Apr 26, 2019
See all posts

Popular Topics

BSC c3sr Continuous Integration CUDA Docker GPU impact MPI MPI_Pack Nsight Compute Nsight Systems personal

Contact

  • pearson@illinois.edu
  • Coordinated Science Lab, 1308 W. Main St., Urbana, IL 61801
  • email to book an appointment