Up to 2 PhD students in Computer Systems focusing on programmable memory systems - Hiring in process/Finished, not possible to apply

The Department of Information Technology holds a leading position in research as well as teaching at all levels. The department has 300 employees, including 120 faculty, 110 PhD students, and 30 research groups. More than 4000 students are enrolled annually.

Read more about our benefits and what it is like to work at Uppsala University

Duties/Description of project and subject area: The memory system of modern processors plays a critical role in delivering performance and efficiency. Today they have multiple sophisticated algorithms running to handle caches (what data to keep and replace), prefetchers (what data to proactively load), and coherency (how to track data), among other things. Currently these algorithms are hard coded in logic circuits, making them impossible to optimize for diverse applications.

This project aims to address these issues by adding programmability to the memory system components to allow them to be customized for each application. To accomplish this we will investigate what kind of programmability to add and where to add it, how to minimize its overhead through clever circuits and instructions, and how to adapt the behavior for each program. This requires hardware, architecture, software, and compilers to work together, and smart researchers to put it all together.

The result of this project will be that applications can describe how their data should best be handled and hardware can do so far more efficiently than today’s one-size-fits-all solutions.

The position is for four years of research, but will typically include 20% teaching extending the time to five years. We encourage our students to do industrial internships during their PhDs. You will be expected to teach in Swedish or English.

Requirements
Candidates should have a Master of Science in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent.

Excellent skills in spoken and written English are an absolute requirement.

Ultimately, pursuing a PhD will require that you learn new skills and master new subjects. While we consider experience with computer architecture, compilers, and circuits important and meritorious, you will be working in a coaching-focused environment where such skills can readily be improved with help from your advisors, fellow PhD students, and courses. Thus, aptitude, self-motivation, interest and perseverance are therefore more important a particular skill-set. There are however a few things which one will not have the time to learn during a PhD and hence we require that applicants are already good writers and programmers, and are able to point to indications thereof, such as text and code produced by the in the past.

In addition to the above, applicants should be able to work well both on their own and with others in a diverse group, be comfortable giving and receiving constructive criticism, and have strong abilities for critical thinking and structured work. These competencies are as important as the technical qualifications. Please see: http://www.it.uu.se/research/group/uart/applying_phd for more details.

Rules governing PhD students are set out in the Higher Education Ordinance chapter 5, §§ 1-7 and in Uppsala University's rules and guidelines.

About the employment
The employment is a temporary position according to the Higher Education Ordinance chapter 5 § 7. Scope of employment 100 %. Starting date as agreed. Placement: Uppsala.

For further information about the position, please contact: Professor David Black-Schaffer, Ph. +4618 471 6830, david.black-schaffer@it.uu.se or Assistant Professor Chang Hyun Park, chang.hyun.park@it.uu.se.

Please submit your application by 14 January 2022, UFV-PA 2021/4642.

Are you considering moving to Sweden to work at Uppsala University? Find out more about what it´s like to work and live in Sweden.