Computer Engineering and Systems Group

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CESG Seminar – Aditya Akella

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Friday, September 30, 2022
10:20 – 11:10 a.m. (CST)
Virtual via Zoom: https://tamu.zoom.us/j/93347193479 (password in emails or syllabus)

Dr. Aditya Akella
Regents Chair in Computer Sciences and Professor at UT Austin
Google Software Engineer

Title: “Cloud Velocity Networking: How We Got Here and Where We’re Headed”

Talking Points:

  • Cloud services are driving the need for networking velocity
  • Programmable network devices are being rapidly developed to serve this need
  • We will cover state-of-the-art and open problems in new programmable device architectures and programming models 

Abstract

Over the past few years, networking advances have played a crucial role in enabling high-velocity, agile cloud computing deployments, and use cases. Technologies such as software-defined networking, network virtualization, and high-bisection fabrics have simplified cloud design and operation, brought exciting new workloads to the cloud, and helped lower the bar to cloud adoption. Networking is poised to bring even more interesting and fundamental transformations to the cloud over the next few years, enabling even greater velocity and diversity of use cases, without compromising performance, manageability, and high assurance. In this talk, I will describe some of the key “enabler” networking ideas, spanning high-performance fabrics and network stacks, programmable hardware, abstractions for network automation, and novel inter-domain protocols and services. I will discuss the tantalizing opportunities these ideas offer for future cloud computing, and the fundamental new research and practical challenges they introduce. I will conclude my talk with observations on what it would take for our research community to make rapid and meaningful progress in this space.

Biography

Dr. Aditya Akella is a Regents Chair Professor of Computer Science at UT Austin and a software engineer at Google. Aditya received his B. Tech. from IIT Madras (2000), and PhD from CMU (2005). His research spans computer systems and networking, with a focus on programmable networks, formal methods in systems, and systems for big data and machine learning. His work has influenced the infrastructure of some of the world’s largest online service providers. Aditya has received many awards for his contributions, including ACM SIGCOMM Test of Time Award (2022), selection as a finalist for the US Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists (2020 and 2021), UW-Madison “Professor of the Year” award (2019 and 2017), IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize (2015), SIGCOMM Rising Star award (2014), NSF CAREER award (2008), and several best paper awards.

More Info on Dr. Akella at: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~akella/ 

More info. on past and future CESG Seminars at CESG Seminars (tamu.edu)

Please join on Friday, 9/30/22 at 10:20 a.m. via Zoom.

 

 

CESG Seminar – Dr. Biswajit Ray

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Friday, September 23, 2022
10:20 – 11:10 a.m. (CST)
ETB 1020 – **In-person** (or Zoom for those receiving emails)

Dr. Biswajit Ray
Associate Professor, Dept. of ECE at The University of Alabama

Title: “Intelligent Data Storage Systems for Cyber-Security, Extreme-Reliability and Edge-Computing”

Talking Points:

  • Monolithic 3D NAND Flash technology is the industry’s workhorse for high density data storage
  • Data security and user privacy are at stake in Flash storage
  • Radiation environment makes Flash storage vulnerable

Abstract

Even though solid-state storage technology has seen unprecedented growth in bit-density over the last few decades, emerging artificial intelligence and edge computing applications present new challenges related to security, resilience, and energy-efficiency. These challenges can only be addressed through innovative system design concepts that aptly utilize the physical properties of storage media. While the traditional storage system mainly relies on technology-agnostic algorithmic functions for the ease of portability, such design underutilizes the rich physical properties of the storage media. Thus, state-of-the art storage solutions are inadequate to ensure resilience, energy efficiency, system security and end-user privacy at the edge nodes and extreme environments.

In this talk, I will present a few innovative techniques that will bridge the gap between device and system design approaches to open-up new opportunities for enhancing resilience, security, and energy efficiency of future edge computing/storage applications. I will illustrate system-level techniques to define hardware security primitives using physical properties of commercial flash memory. I will share my experimental research findings on the radiation effects on the 3D NAND storage and system-level countermeasures. Finally, I will present a conceptual framework for energy-efficient computing and storage using flash memory for error-tolerant applications.

Biography

Dr. Biswajit Ray is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering with the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), AL, USA, where he leads Hardware Security and Reliability Laboratory. Dr. Ray received Ph.D. from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN and then he worked in SanDisk Corporation, Milpitas, California developing 3D NAND Flash memory technology. Dr. Ray holds 17 U.S. issued patents on non-volatile memory systems, published more than 50 research papers in international journals and conferences. Dr. Ray is a recipient of NSF CAREER Award (2022), NSF EPSCoR Research Fellow (2020) and Outstanding Faculty Award (2022) at UAH.

References:
[1] S. Sakib, A. Milenkovic, and B. Ray, “Flash Watermark: An Anti-Counterfeiting Technique for NAND Flash Memories,” IEEE Transaction on Electron Devices, vol. 67, no. 10, pp. 4172–4177, 2020.
[2] P. Kumari, S. Huang, M. Wasiolek, K. Hattar, and B. Ray, “Layer Dependent Bit Error Variation in 3-D NAND Flash Under Ionizing Radiation,” IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, vol. 67, no. 9, pp. 2021-2027, 2020.
[3] M. Hasan and B. Ray, “Data Recovery from “Scrubbed” NAND Flash Storage: Need for Analog Sanitization,” in Proc. of the 29th USENIX Security Symposium, Boston, MA, Aug. 2020.

Google Page: https://sites.google.com/a/uah.edu/ray_biswajit 

Please join on Friday, 9/23/22 at 10:20 a.m. in ETB 1020.

Host: Dr. Sunil Khatri

 

Dr. P.R. Kumar – IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal

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Dr. Kumar is the 2022 recipient of one of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) most prestigious honors — the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal. It is the highest award by IEEE in communications and networking. Kumar was recognized for his seminal contributions to the modeling, analysis and design of wireless networks.

For more, go to https://engineering.tamu.edu/news/2021/12/kumar-awarded-institute-of-electrical-and-electronics-engineers-medal.html.

Congratulations Dr. Kumar!

Congratulations Dr. Karan Watson!

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Dr. Karan Watson, Regents Professor, was awarded the 2021 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Lifetime Achievement Award in Engineering Education. Dr. Watson was recognized for her pioneering leadership and sustained contributions to education in the fields of engineering and engineering technology.

For the full article or a more in-depth look at her work, please visit: Texas A&M Engineering News and Dr. Watson’s Google Scholar Profile

Past Recipients
2012 Richard M. Felder
2014 James E. Stice
2015 Karl A. Smith
2016 Russ Pimmel
2018 James L. Melsa
2019 K.L. DeVries
2020 Don P. Giddens
2021  Karan L. Watson

CESG Former Student Shiyan Hu Elected to European Academy of Sciences and Arts

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CESG former student, Shiyan Hu, who received his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering in 2008, has been elected as a Member for European Academy of Sciences and Arts for his significant contributions to Design, Optimization, and Security of Cyber-Physical Systems.

European Academy of Sciences and Arts currently has about 2,000 members, including 34 Nobel Prize Laureates, who are world leading scientists, artists, and practitioners of governance, with expertise ranging from Natural Sciences, Medicine, Technical & Environmental Sciences, Humanities, to Social Sciences. Academy members, who are dedicated to innovative research, international collaboration as well as the exchange and dissemination of knowledge, are elected based on their outstanding achievements.

Shiyan Hu is a professor and the Chair in Cyber-Physical System Security and Director of Cyber Security Academy at University of Southampton. He has published more than 150 refereed papers in the area of Cyber-Physical Systems, Cyber-Physical System Security, and VLSI Computer Aided Design, where most of his journal articles appeared in IEEE/ACM Transactions. He is an ACM Distinguished Speaker, an IEEE Systems Council Distinguished Lecturer, a recipient of the 2017 IEEE Computer Society TCSC Middle Career Researcher Award, and a recipient of the 2014 U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award. His publications have received distinctions such as the 2018 IEEE Systems Journal Best Paper Award, the 2017 Keynote Paper in IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design, the Front Cover Paper in IEEE Transactions on Nanobioscience in March 2014, multiple Thomson Reuters ESI Highly Cited Papers/Hot Papers, etc. His ultra-fast slew buffering technique has been widely deployed in the industry for designing over 50 microprocessor and ASIC chips such as IBM flagship chips POWER 7 and 8.

He is a well-recognized international leader in his field. He is chairing the IEEE Technical Committee on Cyber-Physical Systems, leading IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications, and chaired the 2020 Editor-in-Chief Search Committee Chair for ACM TODAES. He has served as an Associate Editor for 5 IEEE/ACM Transactions such as IEEE TCAD, IEEE TII and ACM TCPS and as a Guest Editor for various IEEE/ACM journals such as Proceedings of the IEEE and IEEE Transactions on Computers. He is an Elected Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, a Fellow of IET, and a Fellow of British Computer Society.

Shiyan Hu says: “I am delighted to be elected as a Member of European Academy of Sciences and Arts. It is a unique honor in recognition of my research accomplishments and international leadership in my research fields. After many years following my graduation, I still feel very grateful to the education I received from Texas A&M’s Computer Engineering Group and research experience with my Ph.D. advisor Professor Jiang Hu. These were pivotally helpful for me to contribute significantly to my fields.”

Agricultural Blue Legacy Award

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Congratulations to Dr. Jiang Hu and team for receiving the Agricultural Blue Legacy Award this March.

They developed a center pivot automation and control system known as CPACS. This contributes to water conservation in the field of agriculture. To learn more, go to http://www.hpwd.org/newswire/2021/3/18/amarillo-water-management-team-honored.

The team is referred to as the “Amarillo Water Management Team” and includes:
Dr. Hongxin Kong, CEEN, PhD Graduate
Jianfeng Song, CEEN, PhD Candidate
Dr. Justin Sun, CEEN, PhD Graduate
Dr. Yanxiang Yang, CEEN, PhD Graduate
Dr. Jiang Hu, co-director of graduate programs in the Texas A&M Department of Electrical and omputer Engineering at College Station;
Dr. Gary Marek, U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service agricultural engineer at Bushland;
Thomas Marek, AgriLife Research senior research engineer at Amarillo;
Dr. Dana Porter, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service program leader in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering at Lubbock; and
Dr. Qingwu Xue, AgriLife Research crop stress physiologist at Amarillo.

Thank you Amarillo Water Management Team for improving our world with your projects!

 

Pic 1: Dr. Hongxin Kong
Pic 2: Dr. Jiang Hu & Dr. Yanxiang Yang
Pic 3: Dr. Hongxin Kong
Feature Pic: Yanxiang Yang, Thomas Marek & Justin Sun

CESG Seminar – Dr. Joshua Peeples

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Friday, September 2, 2022
10:20 – 11:10 a.m. (CST)
ETB 1020 – **In-person** (or by Zoom for those receiving emails)

Dr. Joshua Peeples
ACES Faculty Fellow & Visiting Assistant Professor, Texas A&M University, Electrical & Computer Engineering

Title: “Statistical Texture Feature Learning for Image Analysis”

Talking Points:

  • Convolutional neural networks are biased towards structural textures
  • Histogram layer(s) provide statistical context within deep learning models to improve performance

Abstract

Feature engineering often plays a vital role in the fields of computer vision and machine learning. A few common examples of engineered features include histogram of oriented gradients (HOG), local binary patterns (LBP), and edge histogram descriptors (EHD). Features such as pixel gradient directions and magnitudes for HOG, encoded pixel differences for LBP, and edge orientations for EHD are aggregated through histograms to extract texture information. However, the process of designing handcrafted features can be difficult and time consuming. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have performed well in various applications such as facial recognition, semantic segmentation, object detection, and image classification through automated feature learning.

A new histogram layer is proposed to learn features and maximize the performance of ANNs for statistical texture analysis. Current approaches using ANNs or handcrafted features do not perform well for some texture applications due to inherent problems within texture datasets (e.g., high intrinsic dimensionality, large intra-class variations) and limitations in methods that use handcrafted and/or deep learning features. The proposed approach is a novel method to synthesize both neural and traditional features into a single pipeline. The histogram layer can estimate bin centers and widths through the backpropagation of errors to aggregate the features from the data while also maintaining spatial information. The improved performance of each network with the addition of histogram layer(s) demonstrates the potential for the use of this new element within ANNs.

Biography

Dr. Joshua Peeples is an ACES Faculty Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University. Dr. Peeples received his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering with a minor in mathematics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He earned his Ph.D. in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Florida with Dr. Alina Zare. During his Ph.D. studies, Dr. Peeples developed and refined novel deep learning methods for texture characterization, segmentation, and classification. Dr. Peeples’ current research seeks to extend his dissertation work and explore new aspects such as developing algorithms for explainable AI and various real-world applications in other domains (e.g., biomedical, agriculture). These methods can then be applied toward automated image understanding, object detection, and classification. Dr. Peeples has been recognized with several awards, including the Florida Education Fund’s McKnight Doctoral Fellowship and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. In addition to research and teaching, Dr. Peeples is dedicated to service and advocacy for students at the university and in the community.

More information on Dr. Peeples at https://engineering.tamu.edu/electrical/profiles/peeples-joshua.html 

Please join on Friday, 9/2/22 at 10:20 a.m. in ETB 1020.

 

Congratulations Summer 2022 Masters’ and Doctorate Graduates!

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CESG is proud to list our Summer 2022 graduating students. We celebrate these students who have worked hard not only on classes and research but also overcame the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic. Since March 2020, we switched to many online events, seminars, and classes, so most have not had a typical experience for nearly two years. However, we can say they are better equipped to face the unknown and practiced in flexibility and creativity whatever may come as they enter industry, academia, or other goals they have been working towards! 

Doctorate Degrees

Dr. Sina Pourjabar (Advisor: Gwan Choi)

Dr. Yaguang Li (Advisor: Jiang Hu)

 

Masters’ Degrees

Rahul Gottipati

Skyelar Singh Head

Xiaoqing Shi

Surbhi Thakur

Shih-Chiang Wei

 

May you all have success and happiness in your futures and continue to strive and live by the Aggie Core Values!

Commencement Ceremonies’ Information: https://graduation.tamu.edu

Dr. P.R. Kumar – IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal

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Dr. Kumar is the 2022 recipient of one of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) most prestigious honors — the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal. It is the highest award by IEEE in communications and networking. Kumar was recognized for his seminal contributions to the modeling, analysis and design of wireless networks.

For more, go to https://engineering.tamu.edu/news/2021/12/kumar-awarded-institute-of-electrical-and-electronics-engineers-medal.html.

Congratulations Dr. Kumar!

CESG Seminar: Dr. Bo Yuan

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Friday, January 25, 2021
4:10 – 5:00 p.m.
via Zoom (link below)
 
Dr. Bo Yuan
Asst. Professor, Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Rutgers University

Title: “Algorithm and Hardware Co-Design for Efficient Deep Learning: Sparse and Low-rank Perspective”

Talking Points

  • Algorithm and hardware co-design for structured and unstructured deep neural networks
  • Algorithm and hardware co-design for high-order tensor decomposition-based deep neural networks

Abstract
In the emerging artificial intelligence era, deep neural networks (DNNs), a.k.a. deep learning, have gained unprecedented success in various applications. However, DNNs are usually storage intensive, computation intensive and very energy consuming, thereby posing severe challenges on the future wide deployment in many application scenarios, especially for the resource-constraint low-power IoT application and embedded systems. In this talk, I will introduce the algorithm/hardware co-design works for energy-efficient DNN in my group, from both the sparse and low-rank perspectives. First, I will show the benefit of using structured and unstructured sparsity of DNN for designing low-latency and low-power DNN hardware accelerators. In the second part of my talk, I will present an algorithm/hardware co-design framework that leverages low tensor rankness towards energy-efficient high-accuracy DNN model and accelerators.

Biography
Dr. Bo Yuan is currently the assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Rutgers University. Before that, he was with City University of New York from 2015-2018. Dr. Bo Yuan received his bachelor and master degrees from Nanjing University, China in 2007 and 2010, respectively. He received his PhD degree from University of Minnesota, Twin Cities in 2015. His research interests include algorithm and hardware co-design and implementation for machine learning and signal processing systems, error-resilient low-cost computing techniques for embedded and IoT systems and machine learning for domain-specific applications. He is the recipient of Global Research Competition Finalist Award in Broadcom Corporation. Dr. Yuan serves as technical committee track chair and technical committee member for several IEEE/ACM conferences. He is the associated editor of Springer Journal of Signal Processing System

Zoom Link: https://tamu.zoom.us/j/96343481647; Zoom ID: 963 4348 1647

CESG Seminar: Dr. Craig Robinson

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Friday, January 21, 2021
4:10 – 5:00 p.m.
 ETB 1020 – **In-person**
 
Dr. Craig Robinson
Tech Lead and Manager for Positioning at Waymo

Title: “Waymo Self Driving: An Overview”

Talking Points

    • Self-driving is driven by corner cases
    • Sensor fusion is important; but independence is more useful
    • No problem is too simple

Abstract
We will first give an overview of Waymo, the “Waymo Driver” and the vision for Self-Driving systems we have under development. We will then take a closer look at the current generation vehicle from a technical standpoint and delve into the sensor systems and modalities onboard (radar, laser, camera, IMU’s and microphones(!)). That will lead to a discussion of higher level system architecture (hardware and software) and the safety framework that underpins the system. Finally we will wrap up with some observations from the field regarding differences between research, development and deployment of complex systems like self-driving vehicles.

Biography
Dr. Robinson is a Tech Lead and manager for Positioning at Waymo and is broadly responsible for delivering positioning architecture, software and hardware systems. He joined the self-driving company in 2014 with expertise in inertial navigation, sensor fusion, safety and system design. Prior to Waymo, Dr Robinson worked on pose estimation for Google Street View, server fleet intelligence in Google’s data centers, and early DSRC safety systems at Mercedes-Benz R&D. Dr Robinson completed his MSc & Phd  At University of Illinois in the area of Networked Control systems and was a Fulbright Scholar in 2001. He holds 10 patents in the area of Self Driving, a swimming Guinness world record and a hobby of flying human powered planes.

CESG Seminar: Dr. Mayank Parasar

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Friday, March 25, 2022
4:10 – 5:00 p.m.
ETB 1020 – *In-person* (Emerging Technologies Building)
Dr. Mayank Parasar
Samsung Austin R&D Center (SARC) in Austin, TX

Title: “Subactive Techniques for Guaranteeing Routing and Protocol Deadlock Freedom in Interconnection”

Talking Points:

    • Correctness is of paramount concern in interconnection networks. (Routing and Protocol) Deadlock freedom is a cornerstone of correctness.
    • Prior solutions either over-provision the network or incur performance penalty to provide deadlock freedom
    • We propose new set of unified techniques to resolve routing and protocol deadlocks

Abstract
Interconnection networks are the communication backbone for any system. They occur at various scales: from on-chip networks, for example 2.5D/chiplet networks, between processing cores, to supercomputers between compute nodes, to data centers between high-end servers. One of the most fundamental challenges in an interconnection network is that of deadlocks. Deadlocks can be of two types: routing level deadlocks and protocol level deadlocks. Routing level deadlocks occur because of cyclic dependency between packets trying to acquire buffers, whereas protocol level deadlock occurs because the response message is stuck indefinitely behind the queue of request messages. Both kinds of deadlock render the forward movement of packets impossible leading to complete system failure.

Prior work either restricts the path that packets take in the network or provisions an extra set of buffers to resolve routing level deadlocks. For protocol level deadlocks, separate sets of buffers are reserved at every router for each message class. Naturally, proposed solutions either restrict the packet movement resulting in lower performance or require higher area and power.

We propose a new set of efficient techniques for providing both routing and protocol level deadlock freedom. Our techniques provide periodic forced movement to the packets in the network, which breaks any cyclic dependency of packets. Breaking this cyclic dependency results in resolving routing level deadlocks. Moreover, because of periodic forced movement, the response message is never stuck indefinitely behind the queue of request messages; therefore, our techniques also resolve protocol level deadlocks. We use the term ‘subactive’ for these new class of techniques.

Biography:
Dr. Mayank parasar works at Samsung Austin R&D Center (SARC) in Austin, TX. Mayank Parasar has received his Ph.D. from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He received an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2017 and a B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering department from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur in 2013.

He works in computer architecture with the research focus on proposing breakthrough solutions in the field of interconnection networks, memory system and system software/application layer co-design. His dissertation, titled Subactive Techniques for Guaranteeing Routing and Protocol Deadlock Freedom in Interconnection Networks, formulates techniques that guarantee deadlock freedom with a significant reduction in both area and power budget.

He held the position of AMD Student Ambassador at Georgia Tech in the year 2018-19. He received the Otto & Jenny Krauss Fellow award in the year 2015-16.

In-Person @ ETB 1020 @ 4:10 p.m. on Friday, 3/11/22