PhD student in Architecture to Architecture Mapping

Note: this position has been filled.

The TU Delft Department of Software Technology has a open position for a PhD student in Programming Languages.

The starting date for the position could be as soon as May 1, 2021.

State-of-the-art and Motivation

Architecture to architecture translation plays a key role in a number of technologies such as emulation, binary translation, decompilation, virtualization and so on. Emulation tools emulate the architectural features of a guest architecture on a host architecture which requires to correctly map the primitives of guest architecture to the host architecture. A binary translator recompiles the machine code of one architecture (guest) to another architecture (host) in a semantic preserving manner. Such recompilation is facilitated by decompilers which lift the machine code to an intermediate representation for further analysis and optimization. Virtualization technologies enable an application written for one architecture to execute on a virtual machine or container hosted on different processors and architectures. To cater the necessity of the modern applications, modern architectures introduce various advanced features such as concurrency, transactional memory, persistency, and so on. However, these advanced features are supported in different architectures differently and as a result have subtle differences.

Research Challenges

Considering these differences, a translator requires to understand these features precisely and relate them in order to achieve correct and efficient translation. However, due to the subtle complexities involved, these advanced features pose significant challenges to the binary translators. The existing binary translators address these aspects in limited ways or do not address at all. Potential Research Directions: The goal of this project is to develop correct and efficient architecture to architecture translation techniques and tools. There are several research directions in this project, including

  • Develop theoretical foundation of correct and optimal transformations between different architectures for advanced features.
  • Develop correct and efficient static and/or dynamic translation tools.
  • Ensure the correctness of the translation tools.

For more information see the following report.

Reference: On Architecture to Architecture Mapping for Concurrency. Soham Chakraborty.

About the Position

A fully funded PhD position is open for an excellent candidate who can contribute to the one or multiple research directions.

The PI on the project is Soham Chakraborty. The PhD student will be co-supervised by Eelco Visser.

Requirements

A strong candidate will have the following qualifications, knowledge, and skills:

Academic and technical background:

  • A master’s degree (or equivalent) in computer science.

  • Enthusiastic in program languages, formal methods, compilers, and architectures.

  • Experience with one or multiple topics: interactive theorem proving, compiler construction, computer architecture.

Personal skills:

  • Independent, motivated, willing to learn, responsible, and take leadership in research related activities.

  • Collaboration skills to work with other researchers.

  • Excellent oral and written communication skills in English.

Conditions of Employment

Fixed-term contract: 4 years.

TU Delft offers a customisable compensation package, a discount for health insurance and sport memberships, and a monthly work costs contribution. Flexible work schedules can be arranged. An International Children’s Centre offers childcare and an international primary school. Dual Career Services offers support to accompanying partners. Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities: Gross salary PhD student ranging from € 2.325,– (1st year) to € 2.972,– (4th year) per month, plus holiday allowance (8%) and end-of-year bonus (8.3%).

As a PhD candidate you will be enrolled in the TU Delft Graduate School. TU Delft Graduate School provides an inspiring research environment; an excellent team of supervisors, academic staff and a mentor; and a Doctoral Education Programme aimed at developing your transferable, discipline-related and research skills. Please visit http:www.tudelft.nl/phd for more information.

The Organization

The Programming Languages Research Group is an internationally leading research group in programming languages, and active in areas such as language engineering, language design, domain-specific languages, software verification, and program logics. The section employs over 15 people, including academic staff, around 10 PhD students, and two postdoctoral researchers. The group is responsible for programming and programming languages education at the bachelor and master’s levels in the TU Delft Computer Science curriculum.

The Software Technology (ST) Department is one of the leading Dutch departments in research and academic education in computer science, employing over 150 people. The ST Department is responsible for a large part of the curriculum of the bachelor’s and master’s programmes in Computer Science as well as the master’s programme Embedded Systems. The inspiration for its research topics is largely derived from technical ICT problems in industry and society related to large-scale distributed processing, embedded systems, programming productivity, and web-based information analysis.

The Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS) is known worldwide for its high academic quality and the societal relevance of its research programmes. Offering an international working environment, the faculty has more than 1100 employees (including about 500 PhD students) and more than 3000 bachelor’s and master’s students. Together they work on a broad range of technical innovations in the fields of electrical sustainable energy, microelectronics, intelligent systems, software technology, and applied mathematics.

Additional Information

For more information about this position see the website or contact Soham Chakraborty and Eelco Visser.

To apply, please send your application letter by e-mail as soon as possible to Soham Chakraborty sohachak@gmail.com and Eelco Visser e.visser@tudelft.nl.

All applications should include a PDF attachment with:

  • an application letter, including a statement of research interests that demonstrates an understanding of the project topic
  • a detailed CV (including list of publications if available)
  • a list of courses taken and grades obtained
  • a copy or link to your Master’s thesis
  • contact details of 2-3 references