Hardware/software co-design for high performance computing: Challenges and opportunities

This special session aims to introduce to the hardware/software codesign community challenges and opportunities in designing high performance computing (HPC) systems. Though embedded system design and HPC system design have traditionally been considered as two separate areas of research, they in fact share quite some common features, especially as CMOS devices continue along their scaling trends and the HPC community hits hard power and energy limits. Understanding the similarities and differences between the design practices adopted in the two areas will help bridge the two communities and lead to design tool developments benefiting both communities.