Scott Beamer
Assistant Professor
Computer Science and Engineering
University of California, Santa Cruz
sbeamer@ucsc.edu
Office: Engineering 2 Room 229
I design architectures for data-intensive applications, with a focus on improving communication efficiency. I am interested in: computer architecture, data movement optimization, memory interconnects, open-source hardware design, and graph algorithms.
I completed my PhD in Computer Science at UC Berkeley while working on the GAP Project. Previously, I was a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in the Computer Architecture Group.
Want to learn to leverage domain insights to create blazing fast software and efficient architectures? I am currently seeking motivated and curious graduate students. If interested, please contact me and apply to UC Santa Cruz!
My research focuses on improving communication efficiency, since for many data-intensive workloads, accessing the necessary data (communication) is often a bigger challenge than the computation itself. For these communication-bound workloads, optimizing communication can bring many benefits, whether it be improved performance, decreased energy consumption, or reduced manufacturing cost. Much of my work focusses on graph processing, as its data-intensive nature exposes many communication challenges. Going forward, I'm excited to bring my approach to other computational patterns and application domains.
To improve communication efficiency, one can either reduce the amount of communication (move less data) or accelerate the rate of communication (increase utilized bandwidth). My research utilizes both approaches, and I apply them by optimizing software or designing new hardware. To guide these optimization efforts, I analyze the workload to identify bottlenecks. To more aggressively improve hardware communication efficiency, I also investigate the best ways to leverage new technologies such as monolithically integrated silicon photonics.
Reducing Pagerank Communication via Propagation Blocking
Scott Beamer, Krste Asanović, and David Patterson
International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS), Orlando, May 2017
Best Paper Award
PDF
IEEE
Understanding and Improving Graph Algorithm Performance
Scott Beamer
Ph.D. Thesis, University of California Berkeley, September 2016
SPEC Kaivalya Dixit Distinguished Dissertation Award
TR
PDF
The Rocket Chip Generator
Krste Asanović, Rimas Avižienis, Jonathan Bachrach, Scott Beamer, David Biancolin, Christopher Celio, Henry Cook, Palmer Dabbelt, John Hauser, Adam Izraelevitz, Sagar Karandikar, Benjamin Keller, Donggyu Kim, John Koenig, Yunsup Lee, Eric Love, Martin Maas, Albert Magyar, Howard Mao, Miquel Moreto, Albert Ou, David Patterson, Brian Richards, Colin Schmidt, Stephen Twigg, Huy Vo, and Andrew Waterman
Technical Report UCB/EECS-2016-17, EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley, April 2016
TR
repo
Distributed-Memory Breadth-First Search on Massive Graphs
Aydın Buluç, Scott Beamer, Kamesh Madduri, Krste Asanović, and David Patterson
In D. Bader, editor, Parallel Graph Algorithms, CRC Press, Taylor-Francis, 2018 (in press)
PDF
site
GAIL: The Graph Algorithm Iron Law
Scott Beamer, Krste Asanović, and David Patterson
Workshop on Irregular Applications: Architectures and Algorithms (IA^3), at the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC), Austin, November 2015
PDF
ACM
site
Locality Exists in Graph Processing: Workload Characterization on an Ivy Bridge Server
Scott Beamer, Krste Asanović, and David Patterson
International Symposium on Workload Characterization (IISWC), Atlanta, October 2015
Best Paper Award
PDF
IEEE
site
The GAP Benchmark Suite
Scott Beamer, Krste Asanović, and David Patterson
arXiv:1508.03619 [cs.DC], 2015
arXiv
site
Distributed Memory Breadth-First Search Revisited: Enabling Bottom-Up Search
Scott Beamer, Aydın Buluç, Krste Asanović, and David Patterson
Workshop on Multithreaded Architectures and Applications (MTAAP), at the International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS), Boston, May 2013
IEEE
Direction-Optimizing Breadth-First Search
Scott Beamer, Krste Asanović, and David Patterson
International Conference on High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC), Salt Lake City, Utah, November 2012
Best Student Paper Finalist
ACM errata corrected
site
Journal of Scientific Programming (JSP), 21(3-4), October 2013
IOS
Portable Parallel Performance from Sequential, Productive, Embedded Domain-Specific Languages
Shoaib Kamil, Derrick Coetzee, Scott Beamer, Henry Cook, Ekaterina Gonina, Jonathan Harper, Jeffrey Morlan, and Armando Fox
Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming (PPoPP), New Orleans, Louisiana, February 2012
ACM
Searching for a Parent Instead of Fighting Over Children: A Fast Breadth-First Search Implementation for Graph500
Scott Beamer, Krste Asanović, and David Patterson
Technical Report UCB/EECS-2011-117, EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley, November 2011
TR
Re-Architecting DRAM Memory Systems with Monolithically Integrated Silicon Photonics
Scott Beamer, Chen Sun, Yong-jin Kwon, Ajay Joshi, Christopher Batten, Vladimir Stojanović, Krste Asanović
International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), Saint-Malo, France, June 2010
ACM
A Design-Space Exploration for CMOS Photonic Processor Networks
Vladimir Stojanović, Ajay Joshi, Christopher Batten, Yong-Jin Kwon, Scott Beamer, Chen Sun, Krste Asanović
Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition and The National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (OFC/NFOEC), (invited paper), San Diego, CA, March 2010
OFC
Limits and Opportunities for Designing Manycore Processor-to-Memory Networks using Monolithic Silicon Photonics
Ajay Joshi, Christopher Batten, Yong-Jin Kwon, Scott Beamer, Imran Shamim, Krste Asanović, and Vladimir Stojanović
Workshop on Photonic Interconnects & Computer Architecture (PICA), at the International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO), New York, NY, December 2009
PICA
Designing Multisocket Systems with Silicon Photonics
Scott Beamer
M.S. Thesis, University of California Berkeley, December 2009
TR
Designing Multi-socket Systems Using Silicon Photonics
Scott Beamer, Krste Asanović, Christopher Batten, Ajay Joshi, and Vladimir Stojanović
International Conference on Supercomputing (ICS), Yorktown Heights, NY, June 2009
ACM
Silicon-Photonic Clos Networks for Global On-Chip Communication
Ajay Joshi, Christopher Batten, Yong-Jin Kwon, Scott Beamer, Imran Shamim, Krste Asanović, and Vladimir Stojanović
International Symposium on Networks-on-Chip (NoCS), San Diego, CA, May 2009
Best Paper Finalist
ACM