Dr. Clemens Lutz’s dissertation introduces innovative solutions to overcome data transfer bottlenecks in high-performance computing environments.
Congratulations to BIFOLD Alumni Dr. Clemens Lutz, who has been awarded the prestigious Best Dissertation Award 2024 for his outstanding doctoral research in the field of database systems. This award was conferred on him by the Fachgruppe Datenbanken and Informationsssyteme (DBIS-Dissertationspreis) of the Gesellschaft für Informatik as an outstanding recognition for his work, which also will be presented at BTW 2025, on March 7, 2025, by Klaus Meyer-Wegener, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).
His dissertation, Scalable Data Management using GPUs with Fast Interconnects, was supervised by BIFOLD co-director Prof. Dr. Volker Markl, head of the Database Systems and Information Management (DIMA) research group at TU Berlin.
Currently, Clemens Lutz holds the position of Developer Technology Engineer at NVIDIA, where he focuses on data management utilizing modern hardware and distributed systems. His research interests center on leveraging next-generation interconnects, such as NVLink, to enhance the scalability of data management on GPUs.
“In simpler terms, our research empowers users to more quickly and cost-effectively gain insights from large data volumes. In effect, that means users can look deeper at more data, and try out more ideas in a working day”, explains Clemes Lutz.
The dissertation tackled a fundamental challenge in database management: the slow data transfer between main memory and GPUs, a bottleneck commonly referred to as the "interconnect." While database management systems have been optimized to process data using thousands of GPU cores, the limitations of the interconnect remained an open research problem. Clemens’ research investigates a novel interconnect technology for GPUs and introduces interconnect-aware techniques to optimize GPU-enabled database management systems. A key aspect of his approach is that, rather than building upon existing software, he developed core components from the ground up.
At the time of his PhD research, the interconnect technology explored was primarily used in high-performance computing clusters and had not yet reached mainstream adoption. However, major cloud providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle are currently rolling out an evolution of this technology at scale. This development could mark a turning point for research on GPU-enabled database management systems, as more researchers will gain access to the necessary hardware to further advance the field.
Personal Website Clemens Lutz