The platforms and Devices Group performs hardware-related research. Some of the projects are aimed at Microsoft’s hardware business, but most are intended for mobile applications and services business. Hardware acceleration of core software algorithms, in particular for software as services, is the current main push.

The goal of the Platforms and Devices Group is to create or enable new computing platforms. To achieve that goal, the team works from application software to the device level and builds hardware.

Our areas of interest include:

Field Programmable Gate Array-based (FPGA-based) hardware acceleration of algorithms and services
We build FPGA-based hardware accelerators that provide orders of magnitude improvement in system performance (speed, density, and/or power consumption).We are currently applying them to domains such as machine leading, data mining, web services, mobile computing, and others. We place higher priority on this area and plan to accelerate all major machine learning and data mining algorithms in use at Microsoft.

Mobile platforms, devices, and software
Most of our earlier projects lie in this area, with the idea that Moore’s Law will eventually make mobile computing the dominant force in computing. In the case of mobile software, we are focusing on system software, as well as software geared toward specific devices such as inertial sensors. On the hardware device end, we are presently investigating ways to cut off the last wire, namely the power cord. That is, we hope to transfer power wirelessly.

Game peripherals/accessories and related software
The work we are doing in this area overlaps our mobile work. We are investigating natural motion controls with the use of cameras and inertial sensors in game scenarios. This effort will also be extended to non-gaming scenarios.

Strategic licensable hardware IPs
We want to create hardware IPs to implement time-consuming algorithms in software to make them run more quickly and efficiently. Currently, our focus is real-time video stabilization.

Cool stuff
We work on things that are just too wild and too much fun to ignore. We enter some of these areas when the temptations become too great.
 

Primary Contact: Feng-Hsiung Hsu
Cai, Xiongfei	Gao, Rui	Hsu, Feng-Hsiung	Xia, Zenglin
Photo Not Available Xu, Ningyi
Affiliate Members
Zhu, Dexin

Contact Information:
Feng-Hsiung Hsu fhh@microsoft.com