"The Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers Program (UPCRC) is laying the groundwork for the development of technology needed to make parallel computing pervasive. While many-core in your mobile device seems a long time away, Intel will rapidly move from 4 cores today to 32 cores and beyond in a very short period of time. The research being performed at UPCRC has already helped to catalyze and inspire the research community to actively work to solve our industry’s biggest technological problem."
– Andrew Chien, Vice President of Research, Vice President, Intel Labs and Director, Future Technolgies Research

Parallel computing brings together advanced software and processors that have multiple cores or engines, which when combined can handle multiple instructions and tasks simultaneously. Although Microsoft, Intel and many others deliver hardware and software that is capable of handling dual- and quad-core-based PCs today, in the coming years computers are likely to have even more processors inside them.

UPCRC Center Locations

Intel Corporation and Microsoft Corp. have partnered with academia to create two Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers (UPCRC), aimed at accelerating developments in mainstream parallel computing, for consumers and businesses in desktop and mobile computing.

These research centers are located at:

• The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley)
• The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)

Microsoft and Intel have committed a combined $20 million to the UC Berkeley and UIUC research centers over the next five years. An additional $8 million will come from UIUC.  UC Berkeley has applied for $7 million in funds from a state-supported program to match industry grants. The research focus is on advancing parallel programming applications, architecture and operating systems software. This is the first joint industry and university research alliance of this magnitude in the United States focused on mainstream parallel computing.

Bridge the Physical World with the Virtual

"Intel has already shown an 80-core research processor, and we're quickly moving the computing industry to a many-core world," said Andrew Chien. "Working with Microsoft and these two prestigious universities will help catalyze the long-term breakthroughs that are needed to enable dramatic new applications for the mainstream user. We think these new applications will have the ability to efficiently and robustly sense and act in our everyday world with new capabilities: rich digital media and visual interfaces, powerful statistical analyses and search, and mobile applications. Ultimately, these sensing and human interface capabilities will bridge the physical world with the virtual."

A Revolution

"Driven by the unprecedented capability of multicore processors, we're in the midst of a revolution in the computing industry, which profoundly affects the way we develop software," said Tony Hey, corporate vice president of External Research at Microsoft Research. "Working jointly with industry and academia, we plan to explore the next generation of hardware and software to unlock the promise and the power of parallel computing and enable a change in the way people use technology."

About the Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers

Twenty-five top-tier institutions in the field of parallel computing research were evaluated as part of the selection process. UC Berkeley and UIUC were unanimously selected for the strength of their proposed research as evaluated against a field of 25 top universities. The UPCRC at The University of California Berkeley is directed by David Patterson, professor of computer science and pioneering expert in computer architecture, and will include members from the UC Berkeley faculty, as well as doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers. The UPCRC at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is led by Marc Snir, professor of computer science and Wen-Mei Hwu professor of electrical and computer engineering, in collaboration with a number of faculty members and graduate students and researchers.

"This new center is exciting because it allows us to explore the amazing potential of parallel computing," Patterson said. "We look forward to this once-in-a-career opportunity chance to recast the foundations of information technology, which will benefit the entire IT industry for decades to come."

"We now face the exciting challenge of making parallelism so easy to use that parallel programming becomes synonymous with programming," Snir said. "The University of Illinois has a long and proud tradition of being at the forefront in parallel computing. We look forward to ushering in a new era of parallel computing with Microsoft and Intel — one that meets the unique needs of client-focused mass-market applications."

In February a UPCRC Summit was held in Illinois. For a link to video footage of the event please visit Intel Software Network’s Parallel and Multi-Core Community:
http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2009/02/24/upcrc-illinois-summit-12-feb-2009

An overview of UPCRC from Andrew Chien is available.

A whitepaper on this topic, from Illinois, is available for download.

A Berkeley Research Agenda is available for download.

Programs: