Career Profile

I am currently a Senior Researcher and Lecturer at ETH Zurich (in SAFARI group led by Prof. Onur Mutlu). I received my Ph.D. from the City University of Hong Kong (co-supervised by Prof. Tei-Wei Kuo and Prof. Chun Jason Xue). I focus on the design and optimization of mobile operating systems and architectures, aiming to meet the needs of rapid application launching and response, reduce energy consumption, address privacy and security issues, and prolong the service life of devices.

News

April 25, 2025
Our paper is accepted by ATC 2025 !
Mar 23, 2025
Our paper is accepted by ISCA 2025 !
Mar 15, 2025
Our paper is accepted by ICS 2025 !
Jan 28, 2025
Our paper is accepted by ASPLOS 2025 !
Nov 3, 2024
Our paper is accepted by HPCA 2025 !

Objective and Mindset

Objective
Dedicate my research to making meaningful contributions to the research community and society.
Mindset
Think big and aim high. Life is too short to do small things.

Current Research

I focus on the design and optimization of mobile operating systems and architectures, aiming to meet the needs of rapid application launching and response, reduce energy consumption, address privacy and security issues, and prolong the service life of devices.

  • Operating System: mobile file systems, memory management schemes, mobile system privacy and security, I/O stack optimization, and storage systems.

  • Computer Architecture: hardware and software co-design for mobile devices, processing in memory (PIM), and in-storage computing for mobile devices.

Highlighted Research Achievements

As of April 2025, I have published over 29 papers and patents, including 11 first-author or mentored papers in top-tier systems and computer architecture conferences and journals, such as HPCA, FAST, USENIX ATC, EuroSys, TC, TCAD, and TPDS. Beyond academic publishing, my research is dedicated to making a significant impact on the industry.

F2FS File System Optimization

  1. My contributions to the F2FS file system facilitated its deployment in billions of commercial mobile devices. I conducted a comprehensive evaluation of F2FS’s advantages and disadvantages [C13], identified its issues, and implemented numerous optimizations [J3, C12, P9] for our collaborating vendor. This collaborator became the first smartphone vendor to adopt F2FS. Today, F2FS is the de facto standard file system for mobile devices, powering billions of devices worldwide.

  2. A F2FS TRIM optimization patch, ‘f2fs: relax async discard commands more,’ inspired by my paper [J3], was submitted to the Linux Kernel Archives by our collaborator. It has since become the default optimization in the Linux kernel.

Mobile Kernel Optimization

  1. Cache file optimization [C8, P6] and data storage/deduplication techniques [P1, P3, P4] have been adopted by our collaborating vendor and implemented in their OS to optimize storage space on mobile devices. Notably, [P4] was highlighted as a core competency during their product launch.

  2. Developed several memory management optimization prototypes for mobile devices, based on research papers [J2, C9, C11] and patents [P2, P5, P6]. Some of these prototypes have been adopted by commercial smartphones, benefiting over 400 million users.

Joint Optimization of OS and eMMC Controller

  1. Aiming to enhance the data reliability of the F2FS file system, a metadata and normal data-separated storage scheme was proposed based on our profiling results in [C13].

  2. To extend the lifetime of eMMC, I proposed reducing unnecessary data writebacks by leveraging the access patterns of mobile application files, as observed in [C10, P9].

    The proposed techniques have been implemented in some commercial eMMC products of our collaborating eMMC controller vendor.

Patents

Publications

Please check my Google Scholar.

Conference Papers

  • [C1] Riwei Pan; Yu Liang*; Lei Li; Hongchao Du; Tei-Wei Kuo; Chun Jason Xue; SolFS: An Operation-Log Versioning File System for Hash-free Efficient Mobile Cloud Backup. In the 2025 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC'25), Boston, USA, 2025-7-7 to 2025-7-9. (corresponding author)
  • [C2] Kangqi Chen; Rakesh Nadig; Nika Mansouri Ghiasi; Yu Liang; Haiyu Mao; Jisung Park; Manos Frouzakis; Mohammad Sadrosadati; Onur Mutlu; REIS: A High-Performance and Energy-Efficient Retrieval System with In-Storage Processing. In the International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA'25), Tokyo, Japan, 2025-6-21 to 2025-6-25.
  • [C3] Melina Soysal; Konstantina Koliogeorgi; Can Firtina; Nika Mansouri Ghiasi; Rakesh Nadig; Haiyu Mao; Geraldo Francisco de Oliveira Junior; Yu Liang; Klea Zambaku; Mohammad Sadrosadati; Onur Mutlu; MARS: Processing-In-Memory Acceleration of Raw Signal Genome Analysis Inside the Storage Subsystem. In the ACM International Conference on Supercomputing (ICS'25), Salt Lake City, U.S.A., 2025-6-8 to 2025-6-10.
  • [C4] Mayank Kabra; Rakesh Nadig; Harshita Gupta; Manos Frouzakis; Rahul Bera; Vamanan Arulchelvan; Yu Liang; Haiyu Mao; Mohammad Sadrosadati; Onur Mutlu; CIPHERMATCH: Computation using In-flash Processing for Homomorphic Encryption & Reliable String Matching. In the ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS'25), Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2025-3-30 to 2025-4-3.
  • [C5] Yu Liang; Aofeng Shen; Chun Jason Xue; Riwei Pan; Haiyu Mao; Nika Mansouri Ghiasi; Qingcai Jiang; Rakesh Nadig; Lei Li; Rachata Ausavarungnirun; Mohammad Sadrosadati; Onur Mutlu; Ariadne: Hotness-Aware and Size-Adaptive Compressed Swap Scheme for Mobile Devices. In the 31st IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA'25), Las Vegas, USA, 2025-3-1 to 2025-3-5.
  • [C6] Jiacheng Huang; Yunmo Zhang; Junqiao Qiu; Yu Liang; Rachata Ausavarungnirun; Qingan Li; Chun Jason Xue; More Apps, Faster Hot-Launch on Mobile Devices via Fore/Background-aware GC-Swap Co-design. In the ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS'24), San Diego, USA, 2024-4-27 to 2024-5-1.
  • [C7] Changlong Li; Yu Liang*; Rachata Ausavarungnirun; Zongwei Zhu; Liang Shi; Chun Jason Xue; ICE: Collaborating Memory and Process Management for User Experience on Resource-limited Mobile Devices. In the 18th European Conference on Computer Systems (EuroSys'23), Rome, Italy, 2023-5-9 to 2023-5-12. (corresponding author)
  • [C8] Yu Liang; Riwei Pan; Tianyu Ren; Yufei Cui; Rachata Ausavarungnirun; Xianzhang Chen; Changlong Li; Tei-Wei Kuo; Chun Jason Xue; CacheSifter: Sifting Cache Files for Boosted Mobile Performance and Lifetime. In the 20th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST'22), July 10-14, 2022, Santa Clara, CA, USA, 2022-2-22 to 2022-2-24.
  • [C9] Yu Liang; Jinheng Li; Rachata Ausavarungnirun; Riwei Pan; Liang Shi; Tei-Wei Kuo; Chun Jason Xue; Acclaim: Adaptive Memory Reclaim to Improve User Experience in Android Systems. In 2020 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC'20), Boston, MA, USA, 2020-7-15 to 2020-7-17.
  • [C10] Yu Liang; Jinheng Li; Xianzhang Chen; Rachata Ausavarungnirun; Riwei Pan; Tei-Wei Kuo; Chun Jason Xue; Differentiating Cache Files for Fine-grain Management to Improve Mobile Performance and Lifetime. In the 12th USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Storage and File Systems (HotStorage'20), Boston, MA, USA, 2020-7-13 to 2020-7-14.
  • [C11] Yu Liang; Qiao Li; Chun Jason Xue; Mismatched Memory Management of Android Smartphones. In the 11th USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Storage and File Systems (HotStorage'19), RENTON, WA, USA, 2019-7-8 to 2019-7-9.
  • [C12] Qi Li; Aosong Deng; Congming Gao; Yu Liang; Liang Shi; Edwin H.-M. Sha; Optimizing Fragmentation and Segment Cleaning for CPS based Storage Devices. In 2019 ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC'19), Limassol, Cyprus, 2019-4-8 to 2019-4-12.
  • [C13] Yu Liang; Chenchen Fu; Yajuan Du; Aosong Deng; Mengying Zhao; Liang Shi; Chun Jason Xue; An Empirical Study of F2FS on Mobile Devices. In _IEEE International Conference on Embedded and Real-Time Computing Systems and Applications (RTCSA'17), Hsinchu, Taiwan, China, 2017-8-16 to 2017-8-18.

Journal Papers

Academic Services

  • PC member of ATC'23, ATC'24, DSN'24, SYSTOR'24, EuroSys'25, ATC'25, FAST'25, EuroSys'26, and FAST'26.
  • Reviewer of IEEE Transactions on Computers, Transactions on Storage, International Journal of Intelligent Systems, and Computing Surveys.