Abstract: The memory system is a fundamental performance and energy bottleneck in almost all computing systems. Recent system design, application, and technology trends that require more capacity, bandwidth, efficiency, and predictability out of the memory system make it an even more important system bottleneck. At the same time, DRAM and flash technologies are experiencing difficult technology scaling challenges that make the maintenance and enhancement of their capacity, energy-efficiency, and reliability significantly more costly with conventional techniques.   In this talk, we examine some promising research and design directions to overcome challenges posed by memory scaling. Specifically, we discuss three key solution directions: 1) enabling new memory architectures, functions, interfaces, and better integration of the memory and the rest of the system, 2) designing a memory system that intelligently employs multiple memory technologies and coordinates memory and storage management using non-volatile memory technologies, 3) providing predictable performance and QoS to applications sharing the memory/storage system. If time permits, we might also briefly touch upon our ongoing related work in combating scaling challenges of NAND flash memory.   An accompanying paper can be found here: http://users.ece.cmu.edu/~omutlu/pub/memory-systems-research_superfri14.pdf

Short Bio: Onur Mutlu is the Strecker Early Career Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. His broader research interests are in computer architecture, systems and bioinformatics. He is especially interested in interactions across domains, between applications, system software, compilers, and microarchitecture, with a major current focus on memory systems.  He obtained his PhD and MS in ECE from the University of Texas at Austin and BS degrees in Computer Engineering and Psychology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Prior to Carnegie Mellon, he worked at Microsoft Research, Intel Corporation, and Advanced Micro Devices. He received the IEEE Computer Society Young Computer Architect Award, Intel Early Career Faculty Award, faculty partnership awards from various companies, and a healthy number of best paper or "Top Pick" paper recognitions at various computer systems and architecture venues. His computer architecture course lectures and materials are freely available on YouTube. For more information, please see his webpage at http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~omutlu.