Systems Technology

Systems Architecture

Emerging applications in networking, digital media and information technology are expected to drive the evolution of future computing platforms. Systems Architecture refers to the combination of the underlying hardware architecture and system software that comprise a computing platform. Today, we have a wide range of hardware options from general-purpose, parallel multicore CPUs to custom (massively parallel) ASICs and tightly integrated multi-processing systems-on-chip (SoC²). Fortunately, the myriad hardware options do share a common theme: future performance improvements are expected to come primarily from more parallelism in hardware rather than increasing clock-speeds.

Why is Systems Architecture important? Applications are processing increasingly large amounts of data, which slows down performance. To address this, we can devise new algorithms. However, algorithmic improvements alone are not sufficient to keep up with the demands in securing, analyzing or searching large volumes of data. Also, world-wide adoption of common standards makes it difficult to immediately leverage incremental advances in the underlying algorithms. Therefore, we must look beyond algorithmic improvements. Innovations in systems architecture can provide a big boost in application performance. Advances in multi-CPU architectures and FPGA technology are creating compelling cost-performance hardware computing platform tradeoffs. Advances in operating systems, run-time support and parallel domain-specific middleware open up new opportunities for improving application performance.

Systems Analysis & Verification

This research area concentrates on analysis and verification of hardware, software, and embedded systems. We envisage that formal methods will become an essential part of the best practices in the design and development of large, open, distributed, general purpose or embedded systems. With the growth of multi-core processing and concurrent programming in many key computing segments (mobile, server, gaming), there is a great need for effective development and verification technologies for concurrent multi-threaded programs. At the same time, due to the ubiquitous availability of cyber systems that interact with physical environments, there is a great need to develop technologies that target the whole system. The cornerstone of our research is investigation into leading-edge technologies for formal analysis, bringing together the domains of system modeling, formal verification, program analysis, automata theory, constraint solvers, and software engineering. We have made significant progress in these domains in the recent past, with notable examples in SAT-based model checking and software program verification. Going forward, we believe it is essential to combine formal verification with other static and dynamic analysis techniques, with the overall goals of improving design quality, improving developer productivity, and reducing the cost of system development by finding bugs early and cheaply.