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Michel Dagenais
B.Ing. (Poly), Ph.D. (McGill)

Research interests and affiliations

Research interests
  • Distributed and heterogeneous multicore systems

  • Cloud Computing and virtualisation

  • Performance analysis tools

  • Tracing

  • Linux

  • Free and Open Source Software

The main objective of our research group is helping designers and operators of parallel and distributed computer systems to better understand the behavior and performance of their applications. For instance, a request for information (e.g., weather, banking, video, social media) issued from your laptop computer will reach several servers from the information provider through different networks and switches. Moreover, the same request issued soon after may go through other networks and switches and be served by different computers. If the performance obtained is unsatisfactory, how can one understand the behavior and diagnose the problem?
 
Because of the decreasing costs of electronics components, computer systems now contain a large number of processing units that operate in parallel. Large data centers act as server farms for several corporations. Each service for a company may execute in parallel on several computers, when the demand is high. Conversely, each computer may execute tasks for several companies in parallel when the demand is lower. This hazy connection between specific services and specific computers has inspired the term Cloud Computing. On each computer we typically have between 4 and 64 processors (cores), operating in parallel within the central processing unit. Furthermore, a specialised co-processor for graphics, used for other computations as well, is typically available and contains up to 4096 computing cores operating in parallel. Understanding the performance in this context becomes particularly difficult.
 
We are therefore developing, in collaboration with industry, free software tracing, profiling and debugging tools for distributed parallel applications. Those tools collect informations about all the important events occurring during the execution of requests. These informations are then analysed in order to compute how the time is spent among the different functions within the software and the execution units in the hardware, to show histograms comparing the different requests, to compute the critical path, and to identify bottlenecks.
Expertise type(s) (NSERC subjects)
  • 2701 Computer hardware
  • 2704 Distributed and parallel processing
  • 2705 Software and development
  • 2713 Algorithms
  • 2719 Computer architecture and design
  • 2720 Computer systems software

Publications

Recent publications

Teaching

Current courses:

  • Parallel Computing (OpenMP, OpenCL, MPI), INF8601
  • Distributed Systems and Cloud Computing, INF8480

Past participation in courses:

  • Computer Architecture
  • Algorithmic Aspects of Computer Engineering
  • Advanced Computer Graphics
  • Object Oriented Paradigm
  • Operating Systems
  • First year project in Computer and Software Engineering
  • Introduction to Computer Engineering
  • How to succeed in a PhD

Teaching awards:

  • 1988-1989: First prize as professor in Computer Engineering, Gala Méritas of AEP (Polytechnique Student Association)
  • 1996-1997: First prize as professor in Computer Engineering, Gala Méritas of AEP
  • 2003-2004: First prize as professor in Computer Engineering, Gala Méritas of AEP
  • 2013-2014: First prize as professor or lecturer in Computer and Software Engineering, Gala Méritas of AEP
  • 2017-2018: First prize as professor for graduate courses in Computer and Software Engineering, Gala Méritas of AEP
  • 2020-2021: First prize as professor in Computer and Software Engineering, Gala Méritas of AEP

Supervision at Polytechnique

COMPLETED

News about Michel Dagenais

NEWS | February 25, 2021
NSERC Alliance Grants: Polytechnique Montréal ranks first, winning 24% of all funds awarded to Québec universities | Read

Press review about Michel Dagenais

August 3, 2022, Journal Métro, Voici pourquoi plusieurs pensent qu'ArriveCan doit être retirée Le professeur titulaire en génie logiciel à Polytechnique, Michel Dagenais, partage son expertise sur les coûts associés à la création de l'application ArriveCan.
June 8, 2020, Le Devoir, Il ne faut pas prendre à la légère la sécurité des outils de recherche de contacts Lettre d'opinion signée par Nora Boulahia Cuppens, Frédéric Cuppens, Michel Dagenais, José Manuel Fernandez, Ettore Merlo et Gabriela Nicolescu, professeurs au Département de génie informatique et génie logiciel de Polytechnique Montréal.
February 19, 2019, La Presse +, On jette ? Non, on répare ! Dans cet article, Michel Dagenais, professeur titulaire au Département de génie informatique et génie logiciel de Polytechnique Montréal et participant réparateur à l'atelier de réparation Repair Café qui est organisé par le PolyFab Normand Brais et le Bureau du développement durable (Polytechnique Développement durable), commente la proposition de loi du Parlement européen qui vise à obliger les fabricants d’électroménagers à produire des appareils plus facilement réparables.
November 6, 2018, 98,5 FM, Réparer ses objets électroniques et petits électroménagers au lieu de les remplacer! Entrevue de Michel Dagenais, professeur titulaire au Département de génie informatique et génie logiciel de Polytechnique Montréal et cofondateur du Repair Café où il est également réparateur bénévole.
March 27, 2017, La Presse, Consommation: faut-il payer cher pour de la qualité ? « Ça fonctionne ou pas. Des câbles de haute qualité avec contacts en or, c'est une arnaque totale. » Propos de Michel Dagenais, professeur titulaire au Département de génie informatique et génie logiciel de Polytechnique Montréal.
October 13, 2015, La Presse Affaires, Au service du monde de demain. Propos de Daniel Thérriault, professeur de génie mécanique et de Michel Dagenais, professeur de génie informatique et génie logiciel à Polytechnique Montréal.
October 13, 2015, La Presse Affaires, Au service du monde de demain Propos de Daniel Thérriault, professeur de génie mécanique et de Michel Dagenais, professeur de génie informatique et génie logiciel à Polytechnique Montréal.​