Çamsarı – IEE IGSB Software Impact Grant

Excerpt from the RMCOE News article “Three UCSB Teams Receive IEE Seed Funding for Energy Efficiency Research”

This month, three UCSB projects received awards from the Institute for Energy Efficiency (IEE). The IEE’s Research Seed and Software Impact Seed Programs provide critical introductory funding to launch new research projects that promote energy efficiency in areas ranging from computing and communications to infrastructure. 

"IEE seed funding empowers our researchers to advance innovative ideas that are still in the early stages of development but hold tremendous potential to improve energy efficiency,” said Steven DenBaars, director of IEE and a professor of materials and electrical and computer engineering. “These projects often serve as launchpads for securing additional external funding, extending their impact from the laboratory to commercial products and broader societal benefits.”

The IEE Research Seed program began in 2019 to fund promising energy-efficiency research each year, while supporting new faculty members and novel collaborations across disciplines and departments. 

In 2022, IEE added the annual Investment Group of Santa Barbara (IGSB) Software Impact Grant to bolster software projects that lead to significant advances or risk reduction, and are likely to result in commercial products that can have a positive effect on society.

Since the two IEE seed programs began, UCSB faculty members have received a total of $1.4 million in funding, said Mark Abel, executive director of IEE. The money comes entirely from private donations. “The IEE seed programs recognize innovative projects that have the potential to make a real impact on energy efficiency,” he said. “These awards have enrolled more than twenty new faculty members in IEE who have gone on to successfully apply for external grants or start new commercial ventures building on their seed projects.”

 “This year’s seed projects explore critical gaps in the current energy-efficiency landscape through new collaborations and cutting-edge technology,” said emeritus professor of electrical and computer engineering John Bowers, who served as inaugural IEE director until his retirement last spring.  “These researchers are continuing the tradition of excellence in scientific discovery that IEE is known for, and we are looking forward to seeing the directions and the impact of their work on the wider community.”

Çamsarı – IEE IGSB Software Impact Grant: “Life After GPUs: Multiplier-Free LLM Inference for Energy-Efficient AI”

Large language models are everywhere, addressing questions about complex scientific research — and about what to cook for dinner. Regardless of the query, each response involves billions of multiplication operations, said electrical and computer engineering professor Kerem Çamsarı, this year’s IGSB Software Impact Grant recipient, and many AI models “think” too hard to answer the simplest of questions, adding up to enormous drains of power. “It’s a very important field,” Çamsarı said, “especially because it has already penetrated daily life. You know, my grandmother uses ChatGPT now. So we have to do something about the energy consumption involved.”

To reduce the energy involved, Çamsarı and his colleagues in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, postdoctoral scholar Corentin Delacour and NSF Fellow Kyle Lee, intend to swap the multiplication that AI models currently use to respond to queries for a more efficient approach based on addition, rooted in Çamsarı’s expertise in probabilistic computing. As part of their award, they are refining an algorithm that allows an AI model to adjust how much data it samples to solve a problem based on the nature of the problem it is trying to solve.

Çamsarı is one of several of this year’s recipients who have been a part of previous IEE Seed Grants, and have successfully used these grants to launch larger projects. “IEE has been very helpful in the past for me,” he said. “I think my very first grant was from the Institute and that turned into much bigger things. I'd like to repeat that success with this project.”

Excerpt from RMCOE News “Three UCSB Teams Receive IEE Seed Funding for Energy Efficiency Research