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<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span
style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:
"Times New Roman"" lang="EN-US">PhD Thesis proposal<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
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Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""
lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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text-align:center;line-height:normal" align="center"><b
style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span
style="font-size:16.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""
lang="EN-US">Rebooting computing : Design of stochastic
machines <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
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style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""
lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span
style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:
"Times New Roman"" lang="EN-US">Advisor:</span></b><span
style="font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New
Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times
New Roman"" lang="EN-US"> Emmanuel Mazer (LIG)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""
lang="EN-US">Contact: </span><span lang="EN-US"><a
href="mailto:Emmanuel.Mazer@inria.fr"><span
style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times
New Roman""></span></a><a
class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:Emmanuel.Mazer@inria.fr"><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Emmanuel.Mazer@inria.fr">Emmanuel.Mazer@inria.fr</a></a></span><span
style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""
lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""
lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span
style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:
"Times New Roman"" lang="EN-US">Co-advisors:</span></b><span
style="font-size: 12.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times
New Roman"" lang="EN-US"> Laurent Fesquet (TIMA), Didier
Piau (Institut Fourier)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""
lang="EN-US">Contacts: </span><span lang="EN-US"><a
href="mailto:Laurent.Fesquet@imag.fr"><span
style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times
New Roman""></span></a><a
class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:Laurent.Fesquet@imag.fr"><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Laurent.Fesquet@imag.fr">Laurent.Fesquet@imag.fr</a></a></span><span
style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""
lang="EN-US">, </span><span lang="EN-US"><a
href="mailto:Didier.Piau@ujf-grenoble.fr"><span
style="font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New
Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times
New Roman""></span></a><a
class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:Didier.Piau@ujf-grenoble.fr"><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Didier.Piau@ujf-grenoble.fr">Didier.Piau@ujf-grenoble.fr</a></a></span><span
style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""
lang="EN-US"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:
normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New
Roman","serif";
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lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">The Persyval Labex is offering a PhD grant for
a 3-year period. </span></p>
<p><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span lang="EN-US">Overview:<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">As the physical limits of Moore's law are
being reached, a research effort is launched to achieve further
performance improvements by exploring computation paradigms
departing from standard approaches.</span></p>
<p style="margin:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span lang="EN-US">The
project aims at developing hardware dedicated to probabilistic
computation, which extends logic computation realized by Boolean
gates in current computer chips. Such probabilistic computing
devices would allow to solve faster and at a lower energy cost a
wide range of Artificial Intelligence applications, especially
when decisions need to be taken from incomplete data in an
uncertain environment.</span></p>
<p style="margin:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p style="margin:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><span lang="EN-US">More
detailed presentation: <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">The overall goal of the proposed research is
to design, build and program new types of information processing
machines and to demonstrate their effectiveness in low-level
sensor signal<br>
processing such as sound source localization and separation.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN-US">The goal of the research is to replace the Von
Neuman architecture and the floating point arithmetic units
found in CPU and GPU by innovative designs of processing random
bit stream in order to reduce the power consumption of computing
devices while increasing their processing speed and robustness
to noise. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align:
justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New
Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times
New Roman"" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align:
justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New
Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times
New Roman"" lang="EN-US">To address this multi-disciplinary
subject, the candidate will work in close cooperation with four
laboratories (Institut Fourier, Gipsa, LIG, TIMA), part of the
Persyval Labex. The candidate will firstly improve the design of
an existing stochastic machine based on the Gibbs sampling
technique. For instance, by using generating sets, one of the
goals is to make generic the random walk used by the Gibbs
sampler. Another is to elaborate the stochastic machine
architecture and to implement it in hardware. Therefore the
candidate will have to become familiar with computer
architecture, stochastic computing, Bayesian programming,
generating sets for random exploration as well as circuit
design.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align:
justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New
Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times
New Roman"" lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align:
justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New
Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times
New Roman"" lang="EN-US">After an initial period for
acquiring the interdisciplinary technical background, the PhD
candidate will develop a novel architecture dedicated to
stochastic computing and will validate it on an FPGA platform.
As a proof a concept, the stochastic machine will be integrated
in a signal processing chain in order to evaluate it on a sound
source localization application or a source separation problem.
The hardware experimentation will be done in collaboration with
post-doc hired on the project. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align:
justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New
Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times
New Roman"" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span
style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times
New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""
lang="EN-US">Scientific and technical skills:<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">Digital
circuit design, computer architecture, programming skills,
basics in probabilities, Bayesian techniques, mathematical
skills, digital signal processing</span></p>
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