arXiv subjects

Peng Cheng

Publications and source records attributed to Peng Cheng.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2025

A Survey of Operating System Kernel Fuzzing

The Operating System (OS) kernel is foundational in modern computing, especially with the proliferation of diverse computing devices. However, its development also comes with vulnerabilities that can lead to severe security breaches. Kernel fuzzing, a technique used to uncover these vulnerabilities, poses distinct challenges when compared to user-space fuzzing. These include the complexity of configuring the testing environment and addressing the statefulness inherent to both the kernel and the fuzzing process. Despite the significant interest from the community, a comprehensive understanding of kernel fuzzing remains lacking, hindering further progress in the field. In this paper, we present the first systematic study focused specifically on OS kernel fuzzing. We begin by outlining the unique challenges of kernel fuzzing, which distinguish it from those in user space. Following this, we summarize the progress of 107 academic studies from top-tier venues between 2017 and 2025. To structure this analysis, we introduce a stage-based fuzzing model and a novel fuzzing taxonomy that highlights nine core functionalities unique to kernel fuzzing. Each of these functionalities is examined in conjunction with the methodological approaches employed to address them. Finally, we identify remaining gaps in addressing challenges and outline promising directions to guide forthcoming research in kernel security.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2025

Evidence of a two-dimensional nitrogen crystalline structure on silver surfaces

Nitrogen, the most abundant element in Earth's atmosphere, exists as a diatomic gas under standard temperature and pressure. In the two-dimensional (2D) limit, atomically thin nitrogen, termed nitrogene, has been theoretically predicted to form crystalline materials with various polymorphic configurations, exhibiting diverse chemical and physical properties. However, the synthesis of nitrogene has remained elusive due to the strong nitrogen-nitrogen triple bonds. Here, we report experimental evidence of the formation of nitrogen-based crystalline structures compatible with nitrogene on silver surfaces via ion-beam-assisted epitaxy. Through a combination of scanning tunneling microscopy, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, and first-principles calculations, we demonstrate that the nitrogene-like structure adopts a puckered honeycomb lattice. Notably, our calculations predict a nitrogene band gap of up to 7.5 eV, positioning it as a promising candidate for ultraviolet optoelectronic devices and high-k dielectric applications.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

Nonreciprocal spin wave in room-temperature van der Waals ferromagnet $(\rm Fe_{0.78}Co_{0.22})_{5}GeTe_{2}$

Here, we investigate the spin waves in room-temperature van der Waals ferromagnet $(\rm Fe_{0.78}Co_{0.22})_{5}GeTe_{2}$ by utilizing Brillouin light scattering technique. The spin wave dispersion in flakes of different thicknesses shows the key role of dipolar interaction in the spin waves of vdW ferromagnets, and the non-reciprocity of spin wave in thick flakes is observed, which is attributed to the bulk Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction after excluding the influence of dynamic dipolar interaction. The measured bulk DMI parameter D is 0.08 $\rm mJ/m^2$, which is double that of pure $\rm Fe_5GeTe_2$. Our work shows that Co-doped $\rm Fe_5GeTe_2$ is a promising platform for investigating propagating spin wave and topological spin textures at room temperature.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Near-Optimal Reinforcement Learning with Shuffle Differential Privacy

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a powerful tool for sequential decision-making, but its application is often hindered by privacy concerns arising from its interaction data. This challenge is particularly acute in advanced networked systems, where learning from operational and user data can expose systems to privacy inference attacks. Existing differential privacy (DP) models for RL are often inadequate: the centralized model requires a fully trusted server, creating a single point of failure risk, while the local model incurs significant performance degradation that is unsuitable for many networked applications. This paper addresses this gap by leveraging the emerging shuffle model of privacy, an intermediate trust model that provides strong privacy guarantees without a centralized trust assumption. We present Shuffle Differentially Private Policy Elimination (SDP-PE), the first generic policy elimination-based algorithm for episodic RL under the shuffle model. Our method introduces a novel exponential batching schedule and a ``forgetting'' mechanism to balance the competing demands of privacy and learning performance. Our analysis shows that SDP-PE achieves a near-optimal regret bound, demonstrating a superior privacy-regret trade-off with utility comparable to the centralized model while significantly outperforming the local model. The numerical experiments also corroborate our theoretical results and demonstrate the effectiveness of SDP-PE. This work establishes the viability of the shuffle model for secure data-driven decision-making in networked systems.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

FengHuang: Next-Generation Memory Orchestration for AI Inferencing

This document presents a vision for a novel AI infrastructure design that has been initially validated through inference simulations on state-of-the-art large language models. Advancements in deep learning and specialized hardware have driven the rapid growth of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI systems. However, traditional GPU-centric architectures face scalability challenges for inference workloads due to limitations in memory capacity, bandwidth, and interconnect scaling. To address these issues, the FengHuang Platform, a disaggregated AI infrastructure platform, is proposed to overcome memory and communication scaling limits for AI inference. FengHuang features a multi-tier shared-memory architecture combining high-speed local memory with centralized disaggregated remote memory, enhanced by active tensor paging and near-memory compute for tensor operations. Simulations demonstrate that FengHuang achieves up to 93% local memory capacity reduction, 50% GPU compute savings, and 16x to 70x faster inter-GPU communication compared to conventional GPU scaling. Across workloads such as GPT-3, Grok-1, and QWEN3-235B, FengHuang enables up to 50% GPU reductions while maintaining end-user performance, offering a scalable, flexible, and cost-effective solution for AI inference infrastructure. FengHuang provides an optimal balance as a rack-level AI infrastructure scale-up solution. Its open, heterogeneous design eliminates vendor lock-in and enhances supply chain flexibility, enabling significant infrastructure and power cost reductions.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2025

FedeCouple: Fine-Grained Balancing of Global-Generalization and Local-Adaptability in Federated Learning

In privacy-preserving mobile network transmission scenarios with heterogeneous client data, personalized federated learning methods that decouple feature extractors and classifiers have demonstrated notable advantages in enhancing learning capability. However, many existing approaches primarily focus on feature space consistency and classification personalization during local training, often neglecting the local adaptability of the extractor and the global generalization of the classifier. This oversight results in insufficient coordination and weak coupling between the components, ultimately degrading the overall model performance. To address this challenge, we propose FedeCouple, a federated learning method that balances global generalization and local adaptability at a fine-grained level. Our approach jointly learns global and local feature representations while employing dynamic knowledge distillation to enhance the generalization of personalized classifiers. We further introduce anchors to refine the feature space; their strict locality and non-transmission inherently preserve privacy and reduce communication overhead. Furthermore, we provide a theoretical analysis proving that FedeCouple converges for nonconvex objectives, with iterates approaching a stationary point as the number of communication rounds increases. Extensive experiments conducted on five image-classification datasets demonstrate that FedeCouple consistently outperforms nine baseline methods in effectiveness, stability, scalability, and security. Notably, in experiments evaluating effectiveness, FedeCouple surpasses the best baseline by a significant margin of 4.3%.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2025

Development of a 10.8-eV Tabletop Femtosecond Laser with Tunable Polarization for High-Resolution Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy

The development of extreme ultraviolet sources is critical for advancing angleresolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), a powerful technique for probing the electronic structure of materials. Here, we report the construction of a tabletop 10.8-eV femtosecond laser through cascaded third-harmonic generation, which operates at a repetition rate of 1 MHz and delivers a photon flux of approximately 1012 photons/s. The system achieves a high energy resolution of approximately 11.8 meV and tunable polarization. This flexibility enables detailed studies of orbitaland (pseudo)spin characteristics in quantum materials. We demonstrate the capabilities of this laser-ARPES system by investigating several prototypical materials, showcasing its potential for elucidating complex phenomena in quantum materials.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

WMCopier: Forging Invisible Image Watermarks on Arbitrary Images

Invisible Image Watermarking is crucial for ensuring content provenance and accountability in generative AI. While Gen-AI providers are increasingly integrating invisible watermarking systems, the robustness of these schemes against forgery attacks remains poorly characterized. This is critical, as forging traceable watermarks onto illicit content leads to false attribution, potentially harming the reputation and legal standing of Gen-AI service providers who are not responsible for the content. In this work, we propose WMCopier, an effective watermark forgery attack that operates without requiring any prior knowledge of or access to the target watermarking algorithm. Our approach first models the target watermark distribution using an unconditional diffusion model, and then seamlessly embeds the target watermark into a non-watermarked image via a shallow inversion process. We also incorporate an iterative optimization procedure that refines the reconstructed image to further trade off the fidelity and forgery efficiency. Experimental results demonstrate that WMCopier effectively deceives both open-source and closed-source watermark systems (e.g., Amazon's system), achieving a significantly higher success rate than existing methods. Additionally, we evaluate the robustness of forged samples and discuss the potential defenses against our attack.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2025

Learning from the Best, Differently: A Diversity-Driven Rethinking on Data Selection

High-quality pre-training data is crutial for large language models, where quality captures factual reliability and semantic value, and diversity ensures broad coverage and distributional heterogeneity. Existing approaches typically rely on single or multiple-dimensional score-based selection. However, directly selecting top-scored data often degrades performance, and sampling from a broader range is required to recover results. The above non-monotonicity between dataset scores and downstream benchmark results reveals a fundamental bias: score-based methods collapse correlated dimensions, causing top-scored data to appear high-quality while systematically overlooking diversity. We argue that ensuring diversity requires decomposing correlated metrics into orthogonal feature dimensions, from which the top-scored data can be directly selected. Therefore, we proposed the Orthogonal Diversity-Aware Selection (ODiS) algorithm, which preserves both quality and diversity during data selection. First, ODiS evaluates data from multiple dimensions, covering language quality, knowledge quality, and comprehension difficulty. The multi-dimensional scores are then decorrelated via Principal Component Analysis (PCA), yielding orthogonal evaluation dimensions. For each dimension, a Roberta-based scorer is trained to regress the data onto PCA-projected scores, enabling scalable inference on large corpora. Finally, ODiS constructs the training dataset by selecting top-scored data within each orthogonal dimension, thereby ensuring both quality and diversity. Empirical results show that ODiS-selected data exhibit less than 2\% inter-dimension overlap, confirming orthogonality between dimensions. More importantly, models trained with ODiS-selected data significantly outperform other baselines on downstream benchmarks, highlighting the necessity of orthogonal, diversity-aware data selection for LLMs.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2025

Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search of Large Scale Vectors on Distributed Storage

Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search (ANNS) in high-dimensional space is an essential operator in many online services, such as information retrieval and recommendation. Indices constructed by the state-of-the-art ANNS algorithms must be stored in single machine's memory or disk for high recall rate and throughput, suffering from substantial storage cost, constraint of limited scale and single point of failure. While distributed storage can provide a cost-effective and robust solution, there is no efficient and effective algorithms for indexing vectors in distributed storage scenarios. In this paper, we present a new graph-cluster hybrid indexing and search system which supports Distributed Storage Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search, called DSANN. DSANN can efficiently index, store, search billion-scale vector database in distributed storage and guarantee the high availability of index service. DSANN employs the concurrent index construction method to significantly reduces the complexity of index building. Then, DSANN applies Point Aggregation Graph to leverage the structural information of graph to aggregate similar vectors, optimizing storage efficiency and improving query throughput via asynchronous I/O in distributed storage. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate DSANN can efficiently and effectively index, store and search large-scale vector datasets in distributed storage scenarios.

cs.DB↗

arXiv2025

Training Matryoshka Mixture-of-Experts for Elastic Inference-Time Expert Utilization

Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) has emerged as a promising paradigm for efficiently scaling large language models without a proportional increase in computational cost. However, the standard training strategy of Top-K router prevents MoE models from realizing their full potential for elastic inference. When the number of activated experts is altered at inference time, these models exhibit precipitous performance degradation. In this work, we introduce Matryoshka MoE (M-MoE), a training framework that instills a coarse-to-fine structure directly into the expert ensemble. By systematically varying the number of activated experts during training, M-MoE compels the model to learn a meaningful ranking: top-ranked experts collaborate to provide essential, coarse-grained capabilities, while subsequent experts add progressively finer-grained detail. We explore this principle at multiple granularities, identifying a layer-wise randomization strategy as the most effective. Our experiments demonstrate that a single M-MoE model achieves remarkable elasticity, with its performance at various expert counts closely matching that of an entire suite of specialist models, but at only a fraction of the total training cost. This flexibility not only unlocks elastic inference but also enables optimizing performance by allocating different computational budgets to different model layers. Our work paves the way for more practical and adaptable deployments of large-scale MoE models.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2025

Integral cubic form of 5D minimal supergravities and non-perturbative anomalies in 6D (1,0) theories

A five-dimensional minimal supergravity theory coupled to vector and hypermultiplets is specified by a set of trilinear couplings, given by an intersection form $C_{IJK}$, and gravitational couplings specified by an integer-valued vector $a_I$ and is consistent when these data define an integral cubic form. For every Calabi-Yau threefold reduction of M-theory, this condition is satisfied automatically. Via suitable redefinitions of the basis of 5D vectors, this is also shown to be the case for the circle reductions of six-dimensional anomaly-free (1,0) theories. When the 6D theory has a $\mathbb{Z}_k$ gauge symmetry, we point out that the consistency of the circle reduction with nontrivial $\mathbb{Z}_k$ holonomy is closely related to 6D constraints derived by Monnier and Moore. These constraints are extended to semidirect products with continuous gauge groups $\mathbb{Z}_k \ltimes G$ and CHL-like circle compactifications. When $\mathbb{Z}_k$ acts on anti-self-dual tensor fields of 6D supergravity, there should be a nontrivial action of holonomy on the topological Green-Schwarz terms.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

Fully Distributed State Estimation for Multi-agent Systems and its Application in Cooperative Localization

In this paper, we investigate the distributed state estimation problem for a continuous-time linear multi-agent system (MAS) composed of $\mathit{m}$ agents and monitored by the agents themselves. To address this problem, we propose a distributed observer that enables each agent to reconstruct the state of the MAS. The main idea is to let each agent $\mathit{i}$ recover the state of agent $\mathit{j}$ by using leader-follower consensus rules to track agent $\mathit{j}$'s state estimate, which is generated by agent $\mathit{j}$ itself using a Luenberger-like estimation rule. Under the assumptions of node-level observability and topological ordering consistency, we show that the estimation error dynamics are stabilizable if and only if the communication graph is strongly connected. Moreover, we discuss the fully distributed design of the proposed observer, assuming that the agents only know basic MAS configuration information, such as the homogeneity and the maximum number of allowable agents. This design ensures that the proposed observer functions correctly when agents are added or removed. Building on this, we consider cooperative localization as a distributed estimation problem and develop two fully distributed localization algorithms that allow agents to track their own and other agents' positions (and velocities) within the MAS. Finally, we conduct simulations to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed theoretical results.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2025

Infinite Stream Estimation under Personalized $w$-Event Privacy

Streaming data collection is indispensable for stream data analysis, such as event monitoring. However, publishing these data directly leads to privacy leaks. $w$-event privacy is a valuable tool to protect individual privacy within a given time window while maintaining high accuracy in data collection. Most existing $w$-event privacy studies on infinite data stream only focus on homogeneous privacy requirements for all users. In this paper, we propose personalized $w$-event privacy protection that allows different users to have different privacy requirements in private data stream estimation. Specifically, we design a mechanism that allows users to maintain constant privacy requirements at each time slot, namely Personalized Window Size Mechanism (PWSM). Then, we propose two solutions to accurately estimate stream data statistics while achieving $w$-event level $ε$ personalized differential privacy ( ($w$, $ε$)-EPDP), namely Personalized Budget Distribution (PBD) and Peronalized Budget Absorption (PBA). PBD always provides at least the same privacy budget for the next time step as the amount consumed in the previous release. PBA fully absorbs the privacy budget from the previous $k$ time slots, while also borrowing from the privacy budget of the next $k$ time slots, to increase the privacy budget for the current time slot. We prove that both PBD and PBA outperform the state-of-the-art private stream estimation methods while satisfying the privacy requirements of all users. We demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of our PBD and PBA on both real and synthetic data sets, compared with the recent uniformity $w$-event approaches, Budget Distribution (BD) and Budget Absorption (BA). Our PBD achieves 68% less error than BD on average on real data sets. Besides, our PBA achieves 24.9% less error than BA on average on synthetic data sets.

cs.DB↗

arXiv2025

Distribution Functions of $Λ$ and $Σ^0$ Baryons

Treating baryons as quark + interacting-diquark bound states, a symmetry-preserving formulation of a vector$\,\times\,$vector contact interaction (SCI) is used to deliver an extensive, coherent set of predictions for $Λ, Σ^0$ baryon unpolarised and polarised distribution functions (DFs) -- valence, glue, and four-flavour separated sea -- and compare them with those of a like-structured nucleon. $Λ, Σ^0$ baryons are strangeness negative-one isospin partners within the SU$(3)$-flavour baryon octet. This makes such structural comparisons significant. The study reveals impacts of diquark correlations and SU$(3)$-flavour symmetry breaking on $Λ$, $Σ^0$ structure functions, some of which are significant. For instance, were it not for the presence of axialvector diquarks in the $Σ^0$ at the hadron scale, the $s$ quark could carry none of the $Σ^0$ spin. The discussion canvasses issues that include helicity retention in hard scattering processes; the sign and size of polarised gluon DFs; and the origin and decomposition of baryon spins. Interpreted judiciously, the SCI analysis delivers an insightful explanation of baryon structure as expressed in DFs.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2025

Quark + Diquark Description of Nucleon Elastic Electromagnetic Form Factors

Working with a Poincaré-covariant quark + diquark, $q(qq)$, Faddeev equation approach to nucleon structure, a refined symmetry preserving current for electron + nucleon elastic scattering is developed. The parameters in the interaction current are chosen to ensure that the $q(qq)$ picture reproduces selected results from contemporary $3$-body analyses of nucleon elastic electromagnetic form factors. Although the subset of fitted results is small, the $q(qq)$ picture reproduces almost all the $3$-body predictions and often results in better agreement with available data. Notably, the $q(qq)$ framework predicts a zero in $G_E^p/G_M^p$, the absence of such a zero in $G_E^n/G_M^n$, and a zero in the proton's $d$-quark Dirac form factor. Derived $q(qq)$ results for proton flavour-separated light-front-transverse number and anomalous magnetisation densities are also discussed. With the $q(qq)$ framework thus newly benchmarked, one may proceed to comparisons with a broader array of $3$-body results. This may enable new steps to be made toward answering an important question, viz. is the quark + fully-interacting diquark picture of baryon structure only a useful phenomenology or does it come close to expressing robust features of baryon structure?

hep-ph↗

arXiv2025

VSAG: An Optimized Search Framework for Graph-based Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search

Approximate nearest neighbor search (ANNS) is a fundamental problem in vector databases and AI infrastructures. Recent graph-based ANNS algorithms have achieved high search accuracy with practical efficiency. Despite the advancements, these algorithms still face performance bottlenecks in production, due to the random memory access patterns of graph-based search and the high computational overheads of vector distance. In addition, the performance of a graph-based ANNS algorithm is highly sensitive to parameters, while selecting the optimal parameters is cost-prohibitive, e.g., manual tuning requires repeatedly re-building the index. This paper introduces VSAG, an open-source framework that aims to enhance the in production performance of graph-based ANNS algorithms. VSAG has been deployed at scale in the services of Ant Group, and it incorporates three key optimizations: (i) efficient memory access: it reduces L3 cache misses with pre-fetching and cache-friendly vector organization; (ii) automated parameter tuning: it automatically selects performance-optimal parameters without requiring index rebuilding; (iii) efficient distance computation: it leverages modern hardware, scalar quantization, and smartly switches to low-precision representation to dramatically reduce the distance computation costs. We evaluate VSAG on real-world datasets. The experimental results show that VSAG achieves the state-of-the-art performance and provides up to 4x speedup over HNSWlib (an industry-standard library) while ensuring the same accuracy.

cs.DB↗

arXiv2025

ContextCache: Context-Aware Semantic Cache for Multi-Turn Queries in Large Language Models

Semantic caching significantly reduces computational costs and improves efficiency by storing and reusing large language model (LLM) responses. However, existing systems rely primarily on matching individual queries, lacking awareness of multi-turn dialogue contexts, which leads to incorrect cache hits when similar queries appear in different conversational settings. This demonstration introduces ContextCache, a context-aware semantic caching system for multi-turn dialogues. ContextCache employs a two-stage retrieval architecture that first executes vector-based retrieval on the current query to identify potential matches and then integrates current and historical dialogue representations through self-attention mechanisms for precise contextual matching. Evaluation of real-world conversations shows that ContextCache improves precision and recall compared to existing methods. Additionally, cached responses exhibit approximately 10 times lower latency than direct LLM invocation, enabling significant computational cost reductions for LLM conversational applications.

cs.CL↗