The tremendous advancements in computing during the past decade have delivered enormous computational power to enable diversified application paradigms. Among various computing components, the design of multi-core processors is the driving force for the development of next generation server systems. Traditionally, a large body of research has targeted optimizing the performance of multi-core processors. However, energy efficiency, one of the major qualitative aspects in computer systems, is understudied in the literature. With the rapid growth of computing infrastructure, maximizing energy efficiency is evolving as the key consideration in multi-core server system design. Additionally, the proliferation of personal and potentially secretive information in server systems has raised unprecedented concerns on security and privacy. Guarding these server platforms against various hardware-based information leakage attacks is now an equally important mission. This dissertation work aims to address the energy efficiency and information security issues in multi-core system design by leveraging existing hardware supports with low cost. The work was guided by Dr. Guru Venkataramani.
Fan Yao’s dissertation titled “Low-cost Techniques for Enhancing Energy Efficiency and Information Security in Next Generation Multi-core Server System Designs”, proposes novel techniques that make smart use of commercial-off-the-shelf power-saving features to achieve optimized energy efficiency for QoS constrained applications. To enhance server information security, his work undertakes a comprehensive investigation of information leakage vulnerabilities in processor cache coherence fabric and designs efficient countermeasures that guard multi-core servers against adversary’s exploitations. The contributions of his dissertation push the envelope of energy efficiency and information security for next generation multi-core systems with low-cost solutions.
Following graduation, Dr. Fan Yao joined the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Central Florida as a tenure-track assistant professor. He is currently leading the Computer Architecture and System Research (CASR) Lab at the University of Central Florida. His research group is currently working on architecting secure and energy efficient hardware for futuristic computer systems and emerging applications. His work has been published in top conferences and journals including HPCA, DSN, HOST, HPDC, IEEE Micro and IEEE TIFS. Fan continues his professional services on program committees and organizing committees of several flagship computer architecture conferences such as ICCD’19, IISWC’19, HPCA’19 and HPCA’20.