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The IEEE has selected a paper by Assistant Professor Engin Ipek as one of its yearly "Micro's Top Picks from the Computer Architecture Conferences." The IEEE Micro January/February 2010 issue will cite Ipek's ISCA'09 paper, which he co-authored with colleagues at Microsoft Research, as "one of the 12 most significant computer architecture papers of 2009 based on novelty and long-term impact." The annual selection is made by a committee of senior architects.

In the abstract of his award-winning paper, Ipek and his co-authors write that "memory scaling is in jeopardy as charge storage and sensing mechanisms become less reliable for prevalent memory technologies, such as DRAM. In contrast, phase change memory (PCM) storage relies on scalable current and thermal mechanisms. To exploit PCM's scalability as a DRAM alternative, PCM must be architected to address relatively long latencies, high energy writes, and finite endurance...In [ISCA'09], we propose area-neutral architectural enhancements that address these limitations and make PCM competitive with DRAM."

The paper concludes that the "proposed memory architecture lays the foundation for exploiting PCM scalability and non-volatility in main memory. PCM scalability implies lower main memory energy and greater write endurance. Furthermore, non-volatile main memories hold the potential to fundamentally change the landscape of computing. Software cognizant of this newly provided persistence can provide qualitatively new capabilities. For example, system boot/hibernate can be perceived as instantaneous; application checkpointing can be made inexpensive; file systems can provide stronger safety guarantees. Thus, the analysis in this work is a step towards a fundamentally new memory hierarchy with deep implications across the hardware-software interface."

Engin Ipek joined the University of Rochester with a joint appointment in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Department of Computer Science in July, 2009. He came to us from the Computer Architecture Group of Microsoft Research, where his focus was on multicore architectures, hardware-software interaction, and the application of machine learning to computer systems.

References:

B. Lee, E. Ipek, O. Mutlu, D. Burger. "Architecting Phase-Change Memory as a Scalable DRAM Alternative," ISCA'09: Intl. Symp. on Computer Architecture, Austin, TX, June 2009.

LGresh, "Engin Ipek's Research to Center on Self-Optimizing Multicore Architectures."