Feng Chen

Ph.D.
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
The Ohio State University
395 Dreese Laboratories
2015 Neil Avenue
Columbus, OH 43210-1277

Office: Dreese Lab 190
Phone: (614) 247-4066
E-mail: fchen AT cse DOT ohio-state DOT edu

About me

    I am a research scientist at Circuits and Systems Research, Intel Labs in Hillsboro, OR.

    I received my Ph.D. degree (2010) and M.S. degree (2009) in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, the Ohio State University. I received my M.E. degree (2003) and B.E. degree (2000) in Computer Science at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. Before joining the Ohio State University, I was a graduate student in the Department of Computer Science at the College of William and Mary.

    My Ph.D. thesis advisor was Professor Xiaodong Zhang, and I was a member of HPCS Lab.

Research Interest

My research interest is focused on, but not limited in, computer systems, especially memory and storage systems, and optimizing performance and energy efficiency for data-intensive applications. Most recently, I am particularly interested in emerging storage technologies, such as Flash Memory based Solid State Drives (SSDs), Phase Change Memories (PCM), and large-scale distributed storage systems for cloud computing.

My previous research work includes advanced buffer cache management in operating systems, energy-aware caching and prefetching techniques, multi-core aware optimization in database systems, and performance analysis and optimization for SSDs.

Education

2006-2010 Ph.D in Computer Science and Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
08/2009 M.S. in Computer Science and Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
2003-2005 Graduate student in Computer Science, The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA
2000-2003 M.E. in Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
1996-2000 B.E. in Computer Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

Honors and Awards

2011 Best Paper Award, the 25th ACM International Conference on Supercomputing
2010 Distinguished Graduate Research Award, CSE, The Ohio State University
2007 First Prize Award, CSE 2007 Research Poster Exhibition, The Ohio State University
2005 USENIX Conference Scholarship (FAST'05)
2002 ZyXEL Special Scholarship, Zhejiang University
1999 Outstanding Student Scholarship, Zhejiang University
1997 Outstanding Student Teaching and Practice Scholarship, Zhejiang University
1996 Outstanding Freshman Scholarship, Zhejiang University

Employment History

2010-present Research Scientist, Circuits and Systems Research, Intel Labs, Hillsboro, OR
2006-2010 Research Associate, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
06-09/2008 Graduate Intern, Intel Labs, Hillsboro, OR
2004-2005 Research Assistant, The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA
2003-2004 Teaching Assistant, The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA
1999-2003 Research Assistant, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

Research Papers

Michael Mesnier, Jason Akers, Feng Chen, and Tian Luo, "Differentiated Storage Services", to appear in Proceedings of the 23rd ACM Symposium on Operating System Principles (SOSP'11), Cascais, Portugal, October 23 - 26, 2011.

Feng Chen, David A. Koufaty, and Xiaodong Zhang, "Hystor: Making the Best Use of Solid State Drives in High Performance Storage Systems", Proceedings of the 25th ACM International Conference on Supercomputing (ICS'11), Tucson, Arizona, May 31 - June 4, 2011, Best Paper Award.

Feng Chen, Tian Luo, and Xiaodong Zhang, "CAFTL: A Content-Aware Flash Translation Layer Enhancing the Lifespan of Flash Memory based Solid State Drives", Proceedings of the 9th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST'11), San Jose, CA, February 15-17, 2011.

Feng Chen, Rubao Lee, and Xiaodong Zhang, "Essential Roles of Exploiting Internal Parallelism of Flash Memory based Solid State Drives in High-Speed Data Processing", Proceedings of the 17th International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA'11), San Antonio, Texas, February 12-16, 2011.

Feng Chen and Xiaodong Zhang, "PS-BC: Power-saving Considerations in Design of Buffer Caches Serving Heterogeneous Storage Devices", Proceedings of 2010 International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design (ISLPED'10), Austin, Texas, August 18-20, 2010.

Rubao Lee, Xiaoning Ding, Feng Chen, Qingda Lu, and Xiaodong Zhang, "MCC-DB: Minimizing Cache Conflicts in Multi-core Processors for Databases", Proceedings of the 35th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB'09), Lyon, France, August 24-28, 2009.

Feng Chen, David A. Koufaty, and Xiaodong Zhang, "Understanding Intrinsic Characteristics and System Implications of Flash Memory based Solid State Drives", Proceedings of 2009 ACM SIGMETRICS Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems (SIGMETRICS/Performance'09), Seattle, WA, June 15-19, 2009.

Feng Chen and Xiaodong Zhang, "Caching for Bursts (C-Burst): Let Hard Disks Sleep Well and Work Energetically", Proceedings of 2008 International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design (ISLPED'08), Bangalore, India, August 11-13, 2008.

Feng Chen, Song Jiang, Weisong Shi, Weikuan Yu, "FlexFetch: A History-Aware Scheme for I/O Energy Saving in Mobile Computing", Proceedings of 2007 International Conference on Parallel Processing (ICPP'07), Xi'an, China, September 10-14, 2007.

Xiaoning Ding, Song Jiang, Feng Chen, "A Buffer Cache Management Scheme Exploiting Both Temporal and Spatial Locality", ACM Transactions on Storage, 3(2): June 2007.

Xiaoning Ding, Song Jiang, Feng Chen, Kei Davis, and Xiaodong Zhang, "DiskSeen: Exploiting Disk Layout and Access History to Enhance I/O Prefetch", Proceedings of 2007 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (USENIX'07), Santa Clara, CA, June 17-22, 2007.

Feng Chen, Song Jiang, Xiaodong Zhang, "SmartSaver: Turning Flash Drive into a Disk Energy Saver for Mobile Computers", Proceedings of 2006 International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design (ISLPED'06), Tegernsee, Germany, October 4-6, 2006.

Song Jiang, Xiaoning Ding, Feng Chen, Enhua Tan, and Xiaodong Zhang, "DULO: An Effective Buffer Cache Management Scheme to Exploit Both Temporal and Spatial Localities", Proceedings of the 4th USENIX Conference on Files and Storage Technologies (FAST'05), San Francisco, CA, December 14-16, 2005, pp.101-114.

Song Jiang, Feng Chen, and Xiaodong Zhang, "CLOCK-Pro: An Effective Improvement of the CLOCK Replacement", Proceedings of 2005 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (USENIX'05), Anaheim, CA, April 10-15, 2005, pp.323-336.

Book Chapter

Feng Chen, Xiaoning Ding, Song Jiang, "Exploiting Disk Layout and Block Access History for I/O Prefetch", Advanced Operating Systems and Kernel Applications: Techniques and Technologies, Information Science Reference, ISBN 978-1-60566-850-5, October 15, 2009.

Research Impact

The CLOCK-Pro Algorithm -- The CLOCK-Pro algorithm (USENIX'05) is an advanced buffer cache replacement policy in operating system kernels. With a deep data access history, CLOCK-Pro algorithm can effectively mitigate the long-existing performance issues of the well-known LRU algorithm and its variations, such as the high miss ratio caused by one-time data accesses and loop-like access patterns. The first version of CLOCK-Pro was developed in the Linux kernel 2.4.21, and it was later patched into the Linux kernel 2.6.12 by Rik van Riel from the Red Hat, Inc. Linux community has an active discussion and development on CLOCK-Pro. Due to its outstanding advantage in handling workloads with LRU-unfriendly access patterns, CLOCK-Pro has received a strong interest in industry and open source community, it has been adopted in NetBSD, Apache Derby, and OpenLDAP. CLOCK-Pro is also referred to as an example of the impact of academic research work to industry in the section of "Linux and Academia" in the book "Professional Linux Kernel Architecture" by Wolfgan Mauerer.

Professional Membership and Activities

2009- Member of Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
2005 HP Sponsored student for USENIX FAST'05 conference
2007,2009 Invited graduate research presenter to the CSE External Advisory Board
2007-2009 Conference webmaster of ICDCS'08, WWW'08, ICDCS'09

Research Guide

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