Researcher in the verification of systems with non-volatile memories

Published: 2021-02-11

The deadline for applying to this position has passed.

Uppsala University is a comprehensive research-intensive university with a strong international standing. Our ultimate goal is to conduct education and research of the highest quality and relevance to make a long-term difference in society. Our most important assets are all the individuals whose curiosity and dedication make Uppsala University one of Sweden’s most exciting workplaces. Uppsala University has over 45,000 students, more than 7,000 employees and a turnover of around SEK 7 billion.

The Department of Information Technology has a leading position in research and education. The Department currently has about 300 employees, including 120 teachers and 110 PhD students. More than 4000 students study one or more courses at the department each year. More info: http://www.it.uu.se.

Duties: Nonvolatile memories (NVRAMs) offer the best of two worlds, namely the low latency of DRAM, and the persistency of long-term storage. They provide direct access to data in the same way as DRAM, but allow programs to recover from system failures. An important task for programmers when using NVRAMs is to ensure correct recoverability, i.e., that the program returns to a consistent state after a failure. Naively, one would think that correct recoverability would be easy. This is, however, not true, since the state of the NVRAM may not be consistent with the program view. The reason is that write operations persist (i.e., become durable) in an order which may differ from the order in which they are issued by the program. The operation re-orderings give rise to a memory persistency model that prescribes the order in which operations may persist. To analyze concurrent programs operating on NVRAMs, we need also to take into consideration the memory consistency model that defines the semantics of the program running on the processor. Conceptually, persistency and consistency resemble each other since the latter is also defined in terms of the (read and write) operations that are reordered by the processor. The combination of persistency and consistency results in complicated program behaviors, and poses difficult challenges for which the program verification community is currently lacking solutions. The goal of the project is to develop methods, algorithms, and tools for the verification of programs running on systems that exhibit behaviors conforming to both persistency and consistency.

Certain participation in teaching and supervision of students (including doctoral) may be included in the duties (Max 20%).

Requirements: PhD with doctoral degree in computer science/engineering, as well as documented multi-year experience in research in verification of concurrent systems. We require good knowledge of parallel systems and weak memory models.

We require good oral and written proficiency in English.

Personal qualities such as a strong motivation for quality improvement and performance and the ability to lead and run research projects while interacting with other researchers and students are very important. Applicants must be purposeful, structured and able to work effectively both individually and in groups.

Additional qualifications: Experience in teaching and supervising students in related areas, writing of proposal applications, peer reviewing, experience in coordinating academic events is appreciated. 

Instructions for application: The application should contain a description of previous research experience, CV, publication list, copies of diplomas and other relevant documents. We would like you to provide reference information or attach a letter of recommendation.

Salary: Individual salary.

Starting date: As soon as possible or as otherwise agreed.

Type of employment: Temporary position for 1 year.

Scope of employment: 100%

For further information about the position please contact: Professor Parosh Abdulla, parosh@it.uu.se.

Please submit your application by 25 February 2021, UFV-PA 2021/543.

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