Course Information

Course description

In this course, we will discuss advanced techniques for building memory and storage systems. It will cover a variety of recent research topics centered around memory and storage systems, including the new and emerging hardware architecture, systems software, memory-centric applications, near-data computing, rack-scale storage, storage security and reliability, mobile/wearable/IoT storage, and storage at rack scale. Through this course, students will learn not only the fundamental concepts of memory and storage systems via the lecture materials, but also the hands-on experience of building and evaluating a memory/storage-centric system via projects.

Prerequisite

  • ECE391 Computer Systems Engineering (or similar operating systems course)
  • ECE411 Computer Organization and Design / ECE511 Computer Architecture (or similar computer architecture course)

Class Lectures

  • Instructor: Jian Huang
  • When: 12:30pm - 13:50pm, Tuesdays & Thursdays
  • Where: 3013 ECEB

Who is this course for?

ECE522 is primarily intended for motivated seniors and graduate students who want to learn the latest research advances in memory and storage systems and are interested in building systems for memory/storage-centric applications.

Grading policy

  • Paper Review, Presentation, and In-class Discussion (15%)
    • (12%) Students are required to submit their own questions (at least one) for each paper that will be presented.
    • (3%) Each student will participate in the presentation of one paper, the instructor will lead the discussions.
    • Both class and online discussions are strongly encouraged.
  • In-class Pop-quiz (20%)
    • Questions & answers for basic concepts
    • We will have five quizzes.
  • Programming Assignments (40%)
    • Assignment 0 (0%): Student Information Sheet
    • Assignment 1 (12%): A timing experiment with memory system
    • Assignment 2 (13%): A study of the performance behaviors of hugepages
    • Assignment 3 (15%): A study of the garbage collection in solid-state drives
    • Choose one from Assignment 4 or Course Project:
  • Assignment 4 (25%)
    • TBD
  • Final Project (25%)
    • Milestone-1 (2%): related work summary. Each team should submit an investigation of related work.
    • Milestone-2 (5%): submit a project proposal and discuss with the instructor. Proposal would be revised after discussion.
    • Milestone-3 (3%): in-class presentation of the proposed project.
    • Milestone-4 (3%): middle-term checkpoint (a short technical report with prelimary results) and progress discussion with the instructor.
    • Milestone-5 (4%): in-class demo and presentation.
    • Milestone-6 (8%): final report and source code.

    [The outcome of previous course projects has been published at ASPLOS, EuroSys, HotStorage, and ISCA]

TA

Office hours

  • Professor Jian Huang:
    • When/Where: CSL 212, 2-3pm Fridays
  • TA: Shaobo Li
    • When/Where: Tuesday 2-3pm CSL 239
  • TA: Eric Zhou
    • When/Where: Wednesday 2:30-3:30pm CSL 239