KTH in Stockholm is the largest and oldest technical university in Sweden. No less than one-third of Sweden’s technical research and engineering education capacity at university level is provided by KTH. Education and research spans from natural sciences to all branches of engineering and includes architecture, industrial management and urban planning. There are a total of just over 15,000 first and second level students and more than 1,600 doctoral students. KTH has almost 4,300 employees.

The school of Information and Communication Technology, ICT, conducts research and education at leading international level in material physics, photonics/optics, electronic systems, integrated devices and circuits, as well as communication systems. Our research activity encompasses both basic and applied level. We offer a wide spectrum of educational programs at undergraduate, masters and doctoral level. The ICT School fosters close collaboration with Swedish and international companies and research institutes as well as surrounding associations such as Kista Science City.

Description of the position

For Network-on-Chip (NoC) based system designs, formal performance analysis and Quality-of-Service (QoS) IP integration are two key challenges due to guaranteed performance requirements under cost and power constraints. These guarantees include not only hard guarantees for realtime communication but also soft guarantees for nonreal-time communication. Since the design processes for IPs and the communication infrastructure are typically separated, it is very much desirable to equip designers with QoS analysis and control means to efficiently achieve the hard, soft and mixed guarantees during the IP integration process.

Based on our previous works, the project intends to leverage our performance analysis and flow regulation framework. Grounded on network calculus, this framework has proposed deterministic worst-case performance analysis techniques and defined static regulation, enabling to provide hard performance guarantees with reduced buffer requirements. This project shall investigate stochastic performance analysis methods in order to provide stochastic performance guarantees. Based on the formal analysis, we will look into dynamic flow regulation techniques, which can perform regulations according to the network congestion status, and stochastic regulation for dynamic flows to incorporate dynamic threads. Furthermore, optimization of the regulation techniques shall be conducted together with power and reliability management techniques. With the adaptive regulation, hard, soft and mixed guarantees can still be satisfied with confidence. Essentially we intend to build up a cost-effective, power-efficient, QoS adjustable, closed-loop control system in NoCs. The project emphasizes not only theoretical foundations but also their practicability.

The research is to be conducted within an academic research cluster, namely, future of on-die communication fabrics, of Intel Corporation. The proposed project is part of the research, namely, Formal QoS Analysis and Control for NoC Communication, led by Prof. Zhonghai Lu within the Intel academic research cluster. Therefore the research is expected to be potentially influential in leading industrial practices.

If you are ready and motivated, you are very welcome to apply and join the highly competitive and inspiring research team!

Eligibility and Assessment Criteria

Applicants must hold or be about to receive an MSc degree or equivalent to a Swedish Master degree in Electronic Science and Engineering or Computer Science and Engineering or a related area. Excellent proficiency in English is a must, e.g. IELTS (Academic) 6.5 overall (no subscore below 5.5) or TOEFL 90 (no subscore below 20). Excellent academic credentials, communication and team-work skills are expected. Strong knowledge in relevant mathematics is a plus. Evaluation will be based on the scientific quality of the candidate in accordance with the needs of the project.

Employment

Form of employment: Time limited, following the recommendations for PhD program employment in the Higher Education Ordinance (Högskoleförordningen)

Start time: According to the agreement, latest by September 2012
The salary: Follows "KTH:s student salary agreement”

Application

A complete application, written in English, should include the following:

1. Cover letter: One-page summary of your application.
2. Curriculum vitae: Document your relevant academic, professional experience and knowledge. Highlight your significant achievements.
3. Transcripts and degree certificates for your Bachelor and Master: Copies of official documents from your universities in English or with official English translation.
4. Statement of purpose: State your motivation and research interests, your background (studies, technical knowledge etc.) and experience towards the PhD position in our group, and your future goals. The document should be maximum three pages long.
5. Recommendation letters: At least two reference letters, one for your bachelor studies and the other for your master students. If you have relevant work experience, a reference letter from your employer is requested.
6. Two representative publications or technical reports (including theses) in English. For longer documents (over 12 pages), you may provide only an abstract.

Deadline for application is 2012-03-16.
Please refer to the reference number I-2012-0031  in the subject line of your application.

Applications via e-mail are to be sent to registrator@ict.kth.se .

The documents shall be sent as PDF attachments if the application is sent in electronically Please do not send any compressed files.

We also accept applications via ordinary post sent to:
KTH – ICT, Registrator
Forum 105
S-164 40 Kista, Sweden

Contact

For more information about the position, please contact
Zhonghai Lu, Associate Professor
Phone: +46 (0)8 790 4110
Email: zhonghai@kth.se 
Web page: www.ict.kth.se/~zhonghai/

Gun Hjertsson, ICT HR manager
Phone: + 46 (0)8 790 4411
Email: gun@kth.se

Union representative

Lars Abrahamsson, SACO
Phone: +46 (0)8 790 7058
Email: lars.abrahamsson@ee.kth.se