Past Qualifying Exam Papers

Computer Architecture and High-Performance Computing  

A systematic evaluation of transient execution attacks and defenses, USENIX Security 2019

VLSI, SoC, Low Power Design 

Computationally Enabled Minimum Total Energy Tracking for a Performance Regulated Sub-Threshold Microprocessor in 65-nm CMOS, IJSSC 2019

Distributed systems; Dependable and Secure Computing; Software Engineering​    

A survey on IoT security: application areas, security threats, and solution architectures, IEEE Access 2019

Cyber-physical systems; Embedded, Autonomous, Mobile, and Robotic Systems 

Detecting attacks against robotic vehicles: A control invariant approach, CCS 2018

Machine Learning; NLP; Vision, Image and Signal Processing​ 

Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks, NeurIPS 2015

Networks and Internet; Internet of Things; Cloud computing​ 

A Public Option for the Core, SIGCOMM 2020

Computer Architecture and High-performance Computing  

SAM AINSWORTH AND TIMOTHY JONES, “MUONTRAP: PREVENTING CROSS-DOMAIN SPECTRE-LIKE ATTACKS BY CAPTURING SPECULATIVE STATE”, IN PROCEEDINGS OF THE 47TH ACM/IEEE INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE (ISCA), JUNE, 2020.  

VLSI, SoC, Low Power Design 

F. ZARUBA AND L. BENINI, "THE COST OF APPLICATION-CLASS PROCESSING: ENERGY AND PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF A LINUX-READY 1.7-GHZ 64-BIT RISC-V CORE IN 22-NM FDSOI TECHNOLOGY," IN IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VERY LARGE SCALE INTEGRATION (VLSI) SYSTEMS, VOL. 27, NO. 11, PP. 2629-2640, NOV. 2019, DOI: 10.1109/TVLSI.2019.2926114.

Distributed Systems; Dependable and Secure Computing; Software Engineering​    

F. PALOMBA, D. A. A. TAMBURRI, F. ARCELLI FONTANA, R. OLIVETO, A. ZAIDMAN AND A. SEREBRENIK, "BEYOND TECHNICAL ASPECTS: HOW DO COMMUNITY SMELLS INFLUENCE THE INTENSITY OF CODE SMELLS?," IN IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, DOI: 10.1109/TSE.2018.2883603. 

Cyber-physical systems; Embedded, Autonomous, Mobile and Robotic Systems 

ABEL GAWEL, HERMANN BLUM, JOHANNES PANKERT, KOEN KRÄMER, LUCA BARTOLOMEI, SELEN ERCAN§ FARBOD FARSHIDIAN, MARGARITA CHLI, FABIO GRAMAZIO, ROLAND SIEGWART, MARCO HUTTER, AND TIMOTHY SANDY, "A FULLY-INTEGRATED SENSING AND CONTROL SYSTEM FOR HIGH-ACCURACY MOBILE ROBOTIC BUILDING CONSTRUCTION",  2019 IEEE/RSJ INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INTELLIGENT ROBOTS AND SYSTEMS (IROS) MACAU, CHINA, NOVEMBER 4-8, 2019​ ​

Machine Learning; NLP; Vision, Image and Signal Processing​ 

HENGYUAN KANG, LIMING XIA, FUHUA YAN, ZHIBIN WAN, FENG SHI, HUAN YUAN, HUITING JIANG, DIJIA WU, HE SUI, CHANGQING ZHANG AND DINGGANG SHEN, "DIAGNOSIS OF CORONAVIRUS DISEASE 2019 (COVID-19) WITH STRUCTURED LATENT MULTI-VIEW REPRESENTATION LEARNING", IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL IMAGING, VOL. XX, NO. XX, XXXX 2020

Networks and Internet; Internet of Things; Cloud computing​ 

 MUHAMMED ULUYOL, ANTHONY HUANG, AYUSH GOEL, MOSHARAF CHOWDHURY, AND HARSHA V. MADHYASTHA, "NEAR-OPTIMAL LATENCY VERSUS COST TRADEOFFS IN GEO-DISTRIBUTED STORAGE." PROCEEDINGS OF THE 17TH USENIX SYMPOSIUM ON NETWORKED SYSTEMS DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION (NSDI ’20) FEBRUARY 25–27, 2020 • SANTA CLARA, CA, USA  

Computer Architecture and High-Performance Computing

Akshitha Sriraman, Abhishek Dhanotia, Thomas F. Wenisch,  SoftSKU: Optimizing Server Architectures for Microservice Diversity @Scale. In Proceedings of ISCA ’19, Phoenix, AZ, USA, June 22-26, 2019, 14 pages.

VLSI, System on Chip; Low Power Design

Matteo Agostinelli, Massimo Alioto,  David Esseni, and Luca Selmi, Leakage–Delay Tradeoff in FinFET Logic Circuits: A Comparative Analysis With Bulk Technology.  IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, Vol. 18, No. 2, Feb. 2010.

Distributed Systems; Dependable and Secure Computing; Software Engineering

Michele Tufano , Fabio Palomba , Gabriele Bavota , Rocco Oliveto , Massimiliano Di Penta, Andrea De Lucia, and Denys Poshyvanyk, When and Why Your Code Starts to Smell Bad (and Whether the Smells Go Away)​  IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol 43, No. 11, November 2017.

Cyber-Physical Systems; Embedded, Autonomous, Mobile and Robotic Systems

Shinpei Kato, Shota Tokunaga, Yuya Maruyama, Seiya Maeda, Manato Hirabayashi, Yuki Kitsukawa, Abraham Monrroy, Tomohito Ando, Yusuke Fujii, and Takuya Azumi, Autoware on Board: Enabling Autonomous Vehicles with Embedded Systems​,  9th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems, 2018.

Machine Learning; NLP; Vision, Image and Signal Processing

Zhe Zhu , Dun Liang ,Songhai Zhang, Xiaolei Huang, Baoli Li, Shimin Hu, Traffic-Sign Detection and Classification in the Wild, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2016.

Networks and Internet; Internet of Things; Cloud Computing

Gaoyang Guan, Wei Dong∗, Yi Gao, Kaibo Fu, Zhihao Cheng,  TinyLink: A Holistic System for Rapid Development of IoT Applications​, MobiCom’17, Snowbird, UT, USA, October 16-20, 2017,

Computer architecture and high-performance computing  

Neural Cache: Bit-Serial In-Cache Acceleration of Deep Neural Networks, C. Eckert, X. Wang, J. Wang, A. Subramaniyan, R. Iyery, D. Sylvester,  D. Blaauw, & R. Das ISCA 2018.

VLSI, SoC, Low Power Design

"FPGA-SPICE: A Simulation-Based Architecture Evaluation Framework for FPGAs", Xifan Tang ; Edouard Giacomin ; Giovanni De Micheli ; Pierre-Emmanuel Gaillardon, IEEE Transactions on VLSI, Publication Year: 2019,

Cyber-physical systems; Embedded, Autonomous, Mobile and Robotic Systems 

SnapLoc: an ultra-fast UWB-based indoor localization system for an unlimited number of tags. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN '19). ACM,  Bernhard Großwindhager, Michael Stocker, Michael Rath, Carlo Alberto Boano, and Kay Römer. New York, NY, USA, 2019.

Distributed systems; Dependable and Secure computing; software engineering​

“Distributed Attack Detection in a Water Treatment Plant: Method and Case Study", S. Adepu & A. Mathur,” IEEE Transactions on Dependable & Secure Systems, October 2018.

Networks and Internet; Internet of Things; Cloud computing​

"Polymorphic radios: a new design paradigm for ultra-low power communication".  Mohammad Rostami, Jeremy Gummeson, Ali Kiaghadi, and Deepak Ganesan. 2018.  In Proceedings of the 2018 Conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 

Machine Learning; NLP; Vision, Image and Signal Processing​

“Threat of adversarial attacks on deep learning in computer vision: a survey,” Naveed Akhtar & Ajmal Mian, IEEE Transactions, Vol. 6, 2018.

Computer architecture and high-performance computing  

Neural Cache: Bit-Serial In-Cache Acceleration of Deep Neural Networks, C. Eckert, X. Wang, J. Wang, A. Subramaniyan, R. Iyery, D. Sylvester,  D. Blaauw, & R. Das ISCA 2018.

VLSI, SoC, Low Power Design

"FPGA-SPICE: A Simulation-Based Architecture Evaluation Framework for FPGAs", Xifan Tang ; Edouard Giacomin ; Giovanni De Micheli ; Pierre-Emmanuel Gaillardon, IEEE Transactions on VLSI, Publication Year: 2019,

Cyber-physical systems; Embedded, Autonomous, Mobile and Robotic Systems 

SnapLoc: an ultra-fast UWB-based indoor localization system for an unlimited number of tags. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN '19). ACM,  Bernhard Großwindhager, Michael Stocker, Michael Rath, Carlo Alberto Boano, and Kay Römer. New York, NY, USA, 2019.

Distributed systems; Dependable and Secure computing; software engineering​

“Distributed Attack Detection in a Water Treatment Plant: Method and Case Study", S. Adepu & A. Mathur,” IEEE Transactions on Dependable & Secure Systems, October 2018.

Networks and Internet; Internet of Things; Cloud computing​

"Polymorphic radios: a new design paradigm for ultra-low power communication".  Mohammad Rostami, Jeremy Gummeson, Ali Kiaghadi, and Deepak Ganesan. 2018.  In Proceedings of the 2018 Conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 

Machine Learning; NLP; Vision, Image and Signal Processing​

“Threat of adversarial attacks on deep learning in computer vision: a survey,” Naveed Akhtar & Ajmal Mian, IEEE Transactions, Vol. 6, 2018.

Computer Architecture

A Cloud-Scale Acceleration Architecture, MICRO 2016

VLSI, Switching Theory

32-bit Processor core at 5-nm technology: Analysis of transistor and interconnect impact on VLSI system performance," IEDM 2016

Operating Systems, Real-Time and Embedded Systems

TensorFlow: A System for Large-Scale Machine Learning, OSDI 2016

Compilers, Software Systems and Software Engineering

“The Work Life of Developers: Activities, Switches and Perceived Productivity", Jan. 2017 IEEE

Fault-tolerant Computing and Reliability Engineering

“ Faultprog: Testing the Accuracy of Binary-Level Software Fault Injection", Jan. 2016 IEEE

Networks, Distributed Systems & Security

HUG: Multi-Resource Fairness for Correlated and Elastic Demands, NSDI 2016

Computer Architecture

MorphCore: An Energy-Efficient Microarchitecture for High Performance ILP and High Throughput TLP, 2012 IEEE/ACM 45th Annual International Symposium on Microarchitecture.

VLSI, Switching Theory

Dual-Threshold Voltage Techniques for Low-Power Digital Circuits, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, Vol. 35, No. 7, July 2000.

Operating Systems, Real-Time and Embedded Systems

Real-Time Wireless Sensor-Actuator Networks for Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems, Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 104, No. 5, May 2016.

Compilers, Software Systems and Software Engineering

CP-Miner: A Tool for Finding Copy-paste and Related Bugs in Operating System Code, USENIX Association, OSDI '04, 6th Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation.

Fault-tolerant Computing and Reliability Engineering

Run-Time Recovery Mechanism for Transient and Permanent Hardware Faults Based on Distributed, Self-organized Dynamic Partially Reconfigurable Systems, IEEE Transactions on Computers, DOI 10.1109/TC.2015.2506558.

Networks, Distributed Systems & Security

Ethernet: Distributed Packet Switching for Local Computer Networks, Association for Copmuting Machinery, Inc., 1976.

Computer Architecture

A. Perais and A. Seznec, "EOLE: Paving the Way for an Effrective Emplementation of Value Prediction," 978-1-4799-4394, IEEE, 2014, pp. 1-12.

VLSI, Switching Theory

S. M. Trimberger, "Three Ages of FPGAs: A Retrospective on the First Thirty Years of FPGA Technology," Proceddings of the IEEE, Vol. 103, No. 3, March 2015, pp. 318 - 331.

Operating Systems, Real-Time and Embedded Systems

V. Hanson and K Odame, "Real-Time Embedded Implementation of the Binary Mask Algorithm for Hearing Prostehetics," IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, Vol. 8, No. 4 August 2014, pp. 465 -473.

Compilers, Software Systems and Software Engineering

C. Lui, A. Harris, M. Maas, M. Hicks, M. Tiwari, and E. Shi, "GhostRider: A Hardware-Software System for Memory Trace Oblivious Computation, "ASPLOS '15, March 14-18, 2015, Istanbul, Turkey, ACM 978-1-4503-2835, 2015, pp. 87-101.

Fault-tolerant Computing and Reliability Engineering

T.A. Johansen, "Toward Dependable Embedded Model Predictive Control," IEEE Systems Journal, 1932-8187, 2014, pp. 1-12.

Networks, Distributed Systems & Security

C. Shi, K. Joshi, R.K. Panta, M.H. Ammar, E. W. Zegura, "CoAST: Collaborative Application-Aware Scheduling Last-Mile Cellular Traffic," MobiSys’14, June 16–19, 2014, Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, pp. 245-258.

Computer Architecture

J. Meza, Q. Wu, S. Kumar and O. Mutlu,"A Large-Scale Study of Flash Memory Failures in the Field," in SIGMETRICS'15, June 15-19, 2015, Portland, OR, pp. 1-14.

VLSI, Switching Theory

D. Bol, J.D. Vos, C. Hacquet, F. Botman, F. Durvaux, S. Boyd, D. Flandre, J.D. Legat, "SleepWalker: A 25-MHz 0.4-V Sub-mm 7- W/MHz Microcontroller in 65-nm LP/GP CMOS for Low-Carbon Wireless Sensor Nodes," IEEE Journal of Solic-State Circuits, Vol 48, NO. 1, January 2013, p. 20-32.

Operating Systems, Real-Time and Embedded Systems

E. Boutin, J. Ekanayake, W. Lin, B. Shi, J. Zhou, Z. Qian, M. Wu, and L. Zhou, "Apollo: Scalable and Coordinated Scheduling for Cloud-Scale Computing," 11th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI ’14) pp. 285-300.

Compilers, Software Systems and Software Engineering

G. Gay, M. Staats, M. Whalen, and M.P.E. Heimdahl, "The Risks of Coverage-Directed Test Case Generation," DOI 10.1109/TSE.2015.2421011, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, pp.1-17.

Fault-tolerant Computing and Reliability Engineering

T.A. Johansen, "Toward Dependable Embedded Model Predictive Control," IEEE Systems Journal, 1932-8187, 2014, pp. 1-12.

Networks, Distributed Systems & Security

C. Shi, K. Joshi, R.K. Panta, M.H. Ammar, E. W. Zegura, "CoAST: Collaborative Application-Aware Scheduling Last-Mile Cellular Traffic," MobiSys’14, June 16–19, 2014, Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, pp. 245-258.