Preparing Computer Systems for Evolving Technology – URI News

KINGSTON, RI – OCTOBER 4, 2022 – Cloud applications and hardware appliances have evolved significantly, but cloud systems that sit in between cloud applications and hardware appliances have not evolved at the same rate.

Weiwei Jia, who joined the University of Rhode Island’s Department of Computer Engineering as an assistant professor this fall, is developing next-generation cloud systems that can better handle current and future technologies.

“The systems used in the cloud are designed for legacy applications and legacy hardware,” Jia said. “These systems do not take into account the requirements of new applications or the capabilities of emerging hardware devices.”

Paving the way for the future

Jia enjoys understanding, designing, and building scalable, high-performance, and practical computer systems for modern clouds and data centers.

“My research paves the way for the deployment of new services and applications in the modern cloud,” Jia said. “This research is practical, and it could have a real impact on society.”

Two examples of systems Jia designed that are expected to have a big impact are the first task scheduler for edge computing, called DASEC, and an efficient cloud memory management system, called GEMINI.

DASEC helps edge computing deliver low response times for a wide range of applications, such as autonomous robots and vehicles, online gaming and stocks, smart home devices, IoT services, and augmented and virtual reality.

GEMINI will dramatically improve the performance of data-intensive applications in virtualized clouds and data centers.

“Today’s data-intensive applications, such as artificial intelligence, data analytics and high-performance computing, are ubiquitous in cloud and data centers,” Jia said. “These applications often require large computer memory capacity to store their huge datasets for high performance computing. I built GEMINI to efficiently store and manage huge datasets.”

Jia’s research on DASEC and GEMINI will be presented at the upcoming Cloud Computing Symposium and International Conference on Computer Systems.

Later, Jia will release the source code for the benefit of the community, academia, and industry.

Start with a textbook

Jia first became interested in computers when he was in high school in China. He found his brother’s college textbook, C programming languagewhich piqued his interest.

“I was curious about the name of the book because I didn’t understand who could speak the language,” Jia said. “My brother explained languages ​​and books to me. Later, he taught me a lot about computers and how to communicate with them. That’s when I realized this was a career I wanted to pursue.”

come to America

After receiving a master’s degree in computer science and engineering from Northwestern Polytechnical University in China in 2016, Jia decided to pursue a doctorate in computer science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

“I found that many of the top researchers in computer science were from the United States, so I went to the United States to do research on computer systems,” Jia said.

Jia and his wife Shang Xiaowei and their 3-year-old daughter quickly became part of the URI community. Jia’s wife is studying for a Ph.D. Received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from New Jersey Institute of Technology and hopes to join the School of Engineering as a teaching assistant.

“We are excited to join the URI family,” Jia said. “We are grateful for the opportunity and all the support provided by our URI colleagues. We will do our best to contribute positively to the University and the Faculty of Engineering.”

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