Future of New Memory Technologies Explored at UC San Diego Workshop

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Steven Swanson, a professor of computer science (center) at last year's workshop.

Scientists and engineers from around the world will gather to discuss innovations in non-volatile computer memories that help power today’s electronic mobile devices during a three-day workshop held March 3 to 5 at the University of California, San Diego.

The Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego is hosting the fourth Annual Non-Volatile Memories Workshop, which will examine how the technology will be used in tomorrow’s mobile electronic devices and how it’s shaping the future of high-performance and cloud computing.

“Non-volatile memories are driving innovation in all kinds of computing applications, from video-games, to iPhones, to warehouse-sized data centers, but we have only begun to exploit their potential,” said Steven Swanson, a professor of computer science at the Jacobs School and one of the workshop’s organizers. “ The problem is that fully utilizing them is complex and requires many components working together seamlessly.  The goal of this workshop is to get experts on each of those components together in one place to share ideas and ignite progress.”

The workshop begins Sunday, March 3, with a half-day tutorial on “Signal Processing and Coding for Non-Volatile Memories,” presented by Andrew Jiang of Texas A&M, Eitan Yaakobi of Caltech and Jason Bellorado  of Link-a-Media Devices.

Attendance for this year's workshop is expected to top 200.

The event continues Monday and Tuesday with a program of 35 technical presentations by leading researchers from the United States, Europe and Asia, as well as keynote addresses by Stan Williams, a senior fellow at HP Labs and Jon Slaughter, vice president of Technology R&D at Everspin Technologies. 

This year, attendance is expected to top 200 participants as more and more research groups in academia, industry and national labs focus their efforts on leveraging these exciting memory technologies. “The pervasive impact and economic importance of these new storage devices is reflected in the diverse interests of our industry sponsors,” said Paul Siegel, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Jacobs School, and a workshop co-organizer. Sponsors include Intel, NetApp and Western Digital, as well as Facebook, Fusion-io, LSI, Marvell Semiconductor, Microsoft Research, NEC Labs, SK Hynix and Toshiba. 

The workshop is a co-production of the Center for Magnetic Recording Research (http://cmrr.ucsd.edu) and the Non-Volatile Systems Laboratory (http://nvsl.ucsd.edu). 

More information, including a detailed program, is available at http://nvmw.ucsd.edu/2013

Graduate students in Siegel's research group are presenting posters at Research Expo 2013 April 18 here at the Jacobs School: http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/re/