Cross-Layer Co-Design for Accelerating Large-Scale Search Using NVM-based In-Memory computing

We are happy to welcome Prof. Sharon Hu of University Notre Dame, who will give a talk, followed by a standing lunch. 

Large-scale search plays a crucial role in a broad range of data analytics applications, where achieving fast and energy-efficient search is highly desirable. However, accelerating search at scale remains challenging due to massive data volumes and irregular memory access patterns. In-memory computing architectures—particularly non-volatile memory (NVM)-based content addressable memory (CAM)—have emerged as a promising approach for efficient search acceleration, enabling massively parallel lookups with reduced energy consumption. Realizing the full potential of CAM-based accelerators, however, requires careful co-design across devices, circuits, architectures, systems and algorithms.

This talk explores how cross-layer design choices impact the overall efficiency, scalability, and performance of CAM-based search accelerators. I will highlight key tradeoffs and bottlenecks in large-scale CAM-based search systems, and present several algorithm-hardware codesign approaches for improving performance and energy efficiency. The discussions will offer insights for device researchers, circuit designers, and system architects working toward next-generation high-performance accelerators for large-scale search and retrieval workloads.

Bio:

Xiaobo Sharon Hu is Leo E. and Patti Ruth Linbeck Professor of Engineering in the department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, USA. Her research interests include low-power and reliable system design, circuit and architecture design with emerging technologies, real-time embedded systems, and hardware-software co-design. She has published more than 500 papers in these areas and received best paper awards from top design automation conferences. She served as the General Chair and/or TPC Chair of Design Automation Conference, Real-Time Systems Symposium, Embedded Systems Week, etc. She was the Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems and served as Associate Editor of other ACM and IEEE journals. Sharon Hu is a Fellow of the ACM and the IEEE.