Information Theory Seminar

TITLE: Non-Hamming Coding Theory in Data Storage

SPEAKER: Yuval Cassuto (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, San Jose Research Center)

DATE: 2:00 - 3:00 PM, Monday, February 22, 2010

LOCATION: Tahoe, 3U

ABSTRACT:
Coding theory was born as a "spin off" from Shannon's information theory, focusing on constructive and practical methods to combat noisy channels. Motivated by information theory's classical channels - the binary symmetric channel (BSC) and binary erasure channel (BEC) - it concentrated on codes in the Hamming metric, which naturally addresses both of these important channels. While extraordinarily effective for many communication channels, Hamming-metric codes are not always optimal for data-storage channels. These tend to have more complex features, not well captured by the Hamming metric. In the talk we will discuss two examples of storage channels that open rich coding-theoretic research pastures. One is multi-level Flash memories that leads to a theory of asymmetric limited-magnitude error-correcting codes. The other is patterned magnetic storage media that motivates a new study of codes for symbol-pair errors. The talk will have non-negligible components on both the theoretical and practical axes, so audience with either inclination should be comfortable in attendance.

BIOGRAPHY:
Yuval Cassuto is a Research Staff Member at Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, San Jose Research Center. His research focuses on error-correcting codes for data-storage channels, algebraic and combinatorial coding theory, and information theory. His research also spans to the architecture domain, with interests in storage performance, reliability and security.

He received the B.Sc degree in Electrical Engineering, summa cum laude, from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, in 2001, and the MS and Ph.D degrees in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology, in 2004 and 2008, respectively.

From 2000 to 2002, he was with Qualcomm, Israel R&D Center, where he worked on modeling and analysis of physical-layer communication principles.

Dr. Cassuto was awarded the 2001 Texas Instruments Worldwide DSP and Analog Challenge $100,000 award, as well as the Powell and Atwood graduate research fellowship awards.