profile photo

Yu Liang

Senior Researcher

Education

PhD in Computer Science

City University of Hong Kong
2016 - 2021

MSc in Computer Science

Shandong University
2010 - 2013

BSc in Computer Science

Shandong University
2006 - 2010

Languages

  • Chinese (Native)
  • English (Professional)

Research Interests

  • File systems and memory management of mobile devices
  • Design and optimization of mobile storage systems

Career Profile

I received my Ph.D. from the City University of Hong Kong (co-supervised by Prof. Tei-Wei Kuo and Prof. Chun Jason Xue). Now I am a postdoc researcher at ETH Zurich (in SAFARI group led by Prof. Onur Mutlu). I focus on the design and optimization of mobile operating systems and architecture, aiming at the needs of rapid start-up and the response of applications and prolonging the service life of devices:

  1. Put forward the cache file management technology to reduce unnecessary data writebacks to flash storage and prolong the service life of flash chips;

  2. Proposed a memory replacement strategy in line with the characteristics of mobile applications to improve the startup and running performance of applications;

  3. Proposed the joint optimization of file system and flash storage to improve the read and write performance and the service life of flash chips.

Publications

Conference Papers

Journal Papers

Patents

  • [1] Jason Chun Xue, Riwei Pan, Yu Liang, Zhipeng Li, Ge Qiu, Jing Qian, Jian Yi, Jiaxin Li. Memory space management method and memory space management mechanism, 2021, China, 2021107427614
  • [2] Jason Chun Xue, Yu Liang, Riwei Pan, Zhipeng Li, Ge Qiu, Jing Qian, Jian Yi, Jiaxin Li. Cache file management method and mechanism, 2021, China, 2021107427864
  • [3] Jason Chun Xue, Yu Liang, Liang Shi. A method and electronic design for accelerating application startup, 2019, China, 2019110613620
  • [4] Jason Chun Xue, Liang Shi, Yu Liang. Method for separating hot and cold data, 2018, China, 2015110297112

Projects

F2FS File System Optimization

  1. A TRIM optimization “f2fs: relax async discard commands more” motivated by my paper [J2] has been submitted to the Linux kernel Archives by the collaborator.

  2. Provide code interpretation and analysis of advantages and disadvantages of F2FS to help its deployment on commercial mobile devices. (The collaborator is the first smartphone vendor that uses F2FS, and now F2FS is one of the most popular mobile file systems.)

Mobile Kernel Optimization Project

  1. Cache file optimization [C2] and file deduplication work have been approved by the collaborator. They are used in collaborator’s OS to save storage space of mobile devices.

  2. Provided other three optimization prototypes for mobile devices (based on my papers [J1] [C3] [C5]). Some of them have been adopted by commercial smartphones.

Joint Optimization of OS and eMMC Controller

  1. Aiming at the data security of F2FS file system, a metadata and normal data separated storage scheme is proposed.

  2. To improve eMMC lifetime, we propose reduce unnecessary data writebacks based on the access patterns of mobile application files.

    The proposed techniques are planned to be implemented on the eMMC commercial products of the cooperative eMMC controller vendor.

Academic Services

  • The program committee of EuroSys'25
  • The program committee of DSN'24
  • The program committee of ATC'23
  • The shadow PC of EuroSys'23
  • The artifact evaluation committee of ATC/OSDI'22, ATC/OSDI'23, ASPLOS'23, and SOSP'23
  • The reviewer for International Journal of Intelligent Systems
  • The reviewer for Computing Surveys