POWER IS THE CURRENCY OF PERFORMANCE with Bobbie Manne

Abstract: Power is the dominant constraint for AI, impacting the achievable performance of AI systems. This talk covers the growth trends in AI, the impact this has on the power consumption of AI hardware, and the stress it places on the US power grid. We then examine where the power goes, some hardware solutions to lower power dissipation, and the impact physical constraints have on system behavior at scale when power bottlenecks are commonplace. The talk concludes with the environmental impact of AI and the embodied and operational carbon costs associated with large scale AI infrastructures.

Bio:  Srilatha (Bobbie) Manne received her PhD in 1999 and has worked in research and product teams at Compaq, Intel, AMD, Cavium, Microsoft, and Meta. She is currently a Senior Fellow in the Research and Advanced Development team at AMD and works on efficient and sustainable solutions focusing on optimizing AMD server products for at-scale deployment. She is the recipient of the ISCA Test of Time Award for her work on energy efficient processor architecture and has over forty patents pending or granted. She is also one of the organizers of the Undergraduate Architecture (uArch) workshop which sponsors undergraduates from all over the world to attend a research conference and develop the skills and networks to succeed in graduate school. Bobbie lives in Seattle with her family and enjoys cooking and hiking in her spare time.