Events Calendar

ECE Seminar: Future of Computer Architecture and Hardware Security

Speaker: Dr. Onur Mutlu, Professor of Computer Science, Information Technology and Electrical Engineering Department, ETH Zürich

Talk Title: Future of Computer Architecture and Hardware Security

Abstract: Computer architecture has been undergoing a revolution with increasing prevalence of heterogeneous, specialized, and massively-parallel hardware systems, to accelerate major data-intensive workloads and enable better system scaling. Hardware for novel computing paradigms (e.g., processing in memory, quantum computing) is already being prototyped and commercialized, and system complexity is increasing. At the same time, hardware security issues at the very low levels have been causing great concern and threatening the benefits and future of even old computing paradigms like speculative execution and main memory (DRAM) scaling. We are at an exciting time when the tensions between low-level architecture/technology innovations and system security problems such innovations expose are being heavily examined, and such tensions are likely to increase for the foreseeable future.
 
In this talk, we will examine the interplay between computer architecture and system security in modern and emerging computing systems. We will cover major trends in computer architecture and discuss how they may impact hardware and system security.  We will examine potential threats as we see them, especially in areas related to the memory hierarchy and data access. We will also examine the requirements security goals may demand from future hardware architectures and technologies. We aim to provide directions that we believe would be fruitful and important to study to proactively address security challenges of emerging hardware architectures and design fundamentally-secure computing systems. 

Biography: Onur Mutlu is a Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich. He previously held the William D. and Nancy W. Strecker Early Career Professorship at Carnegie Mellon University. His current research interests are in computer architecture, computing systems, hardware security, memory & storage systems, and bioinformatics, with a major focus on designing fundamentally energy-efficient, high-performance, and robust computing systems. He obtained his PhD and MS in ECE from the University of Texas at Austin and BS degrees in Computer Engineering and Psychology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He started the Computer Architecture Group at Microsoft Research (2006-2009), and held product, research and visiting positions at Intel Corporation, Advanced Micro Devices, VMware, Google, and Stanford University. He received various honors for his research, including the 2025 IEEE Computer Society Harry H. Goode Memorial Award, 2024 IFIP WG10.4 Jean-Claude Laprie Award in Dependable Computing (for the original RowHammer work), 2022 Persistent Impact Prize of the Non-Volatile Memory Systems Workshop (for original architectural work on Phase Change Memory), 2021 IEEE High Performance Computer Architecture Conference Test of Time Award (for the Runahead Execution work), 2020 IEEE Computer Society Edward J. McCluskey Technical Achievement Award, 2019 ACM SIGARCH Maurice Wilkes Award and tens of best paper or “Top Pick” paper recognitions at various leading computer systems, architecture, and security venues. He is an ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, and an elected member of the Academy of Europe. He enjoys teaching, mentoring, and enabling & democratizing access to high-quality research and education. He has supervised 23 PhD graduates, multiple of whom received major dissertation awards, 15 postdoctoral trainees, and more than 60 Master’s and Bachelor’s students. His computer architecture and digital logic design course lectures and materials are freely available on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/OnurMutluLectures & https://www.youtube.com/@CMUCompArch), and his research group (https://safari.ethz.ch/) makes a wide variety of software and hardware artifacts freely available online (https://github.com/CMU-SAFARI). For more information, please see his webpage at https://people.inf.ethz.ch/omutlu/.

Host: Dr. Murali Annavaram, annavara@usc.edu

Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/94376879372?pwd=YM8jfM0IB0fawzEFaaNU3bYNsftqaK.1

Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/94376879372?pwd=YM8jfM0IB0fawzEFaaNU3bYNsftqaK.1

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Mayumi Thrasher

This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.