My name is Sudam Wasala. I am an Early Stage Researcher at the APROPOS project where I will be studying the relationships between approximate computing and reliability of systems.
I am originally from Sri Lanka and I currently work as a PhD student at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. I received my Bachelor’s degree in Computer Systems Engineering jointly from the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT) and the Curtin University, Australia. I then followed that up with a Master’s degree in Computer Science at the University of Siegen, Germany.
My research interests span across design space exploration, fault-tolerant systems, system modelling and simulations, digital signal processing and approximate computing.
The aim of my research, which is titled: Fault-tolerant approximate computing techniques, is to develop a software framework for system-level simulations and design space exploration of embedded systems. This framework will incorporate approximate computing and fault-tolerant methods for system optimization to reduce power consumption.
In plain terms, a fault-tolerant system is a computing system that can withstand partial failures and still deliver valid results. During the design stage such systems, it is required to understand and model the reliability of its components. Design space exploration is the systematic analysis of different design parameters to find the optimum configuration. Reliability and power consumption are important optimization goals in these systems. An interesting design parameter that could also be utilised is the usage of approximation techniques. This project intends to explore these relationships, and furthermore, build a software framework that future developers and scientists could use to help automate their design process.
This project gives me an excellent opportunity to enhance my research skill and also to build an international network with the greatest minds in this research domain. I believe that approximate computing could play a vital role in reducing global energy consumption, paving the way for a greener future, and I am very excited to be a part of this development.
