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Get Started Free →Use when drafting or revising ASPLOS prose — engineering the first two pages that rapid review actually reads, stating the cross-layer insight as one quotable sentence, structuring per-layer mechanism sections, writing bounded claims, and fitting everything into 11 self-contained pages that include figures and footnotes.
| Test case | Without → With | Effect | Δ tokens | Δ turns |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| case-02 | ✗→✓ | ▲ Improved | 16% | 0% |
| case-06 | ✗→✓ | ▲ Improved | 52% | 0% |
| case-08 | ✗→✓ | ▲ Improved | 4% | 0% |
| case-09 | ✗→✓ | ▲ Improved | 35% | 0% |
| case-10 | ✗→✓ | ▲ Improved | -5% | 0% |
Two 2027 mechanics dictate ASPLOS prose (CFP, checked 2026-07-08): the rapid review reads only the first two pages, and the 11-page limit counts all text, figures, tables, and footnotes — references excluded. The first makes pages 1-2 a survival organ; the second makes every figure a budget decision. Style here is mostly resource allocation.
By the bottom of page 2, a screener must hold four things. Audit for them mechanically, in order:
| Element | Test | Common failure | |---|---|---| | Cross-layer problem | Can a reader from any of the three communities restate it? | A single-community problem with "co-design" sprinkled on | | One-sentence insight | Is there a sentence a screener could quote in their note? | Insight diffused across three paragraphs, or a category ("we co-design X and Y") instead of an idea | | Mechanism sketch | Does the reader know what each layer does? | Architecture described, software hand-waved (or vice versa) | | Headline evidence | Result + platform class (silicon/FPGA/simulator) + baseline named? | "Significant improvements on a variety of workloads" |
Corollary: background sections, notation, and roadmaps do not belong on pages 1-2. The worked example (../../resources/worked-examples/01-introduction.md) shows a full before → after against exactly this table.
The load-bearing sentence in an ASPLOS paper names information or capability that crosses a layer boundary: what the hardware knows that the OS needs, what the compiler can prove that the microarchitecture can exploit. Drafting discipline:
textWeak: "We propose a hardware/software co-designed approach to memory tiering." (names a category and a topic; contains no idea) Strong: "The contention data the OS needs already passes through the memory controller on every access; the fix is a narrow architectural channel, not a smarter kernel heuristic." (names the information, its current location, and the boundary moved)
If this sentence cannot be written, the problem is usually fit, not prose — return to asplos-topic-selection.
Give each layer its own subsection with its own contribution statement, then a section for the interface between them — the interface is the paper's actual thesis and deserves first-class treatment (encoding, semantics, virtualization behavior, failure modes). Reviewers from different communities will each read "their" subsection closely; the interface section is where they meet.
suite" is a stronger sentence than "negligible overhead."
hardware (14 workloads)" vs "up to 3.4× in simulation" are different epistemic objects and must not blend.
analyzed regression buys more reviewer trust than a page of wins.
Because figures count against the limit, they compete with prose on equal terms:
plots and merge panels that make one point.
of components — reviewers cite the diagram that explains the idea.
per-workload bars into summary + appendix grid → tighten mechanism prose → never touch template geometry (mandatory template; violations risk rejection unread).
hyperlinked in-text numbers and DOIs per entry; a hygiene-signaling detail reviewers notice early.
before References).
Six sentences, in this order, cover what both the rapid screener and the eventual citer need: (1) the friction two layers create today; (2) the insight sentence; (3) the mechanism, one clause per layer; (4) the headline number with instrument and baseline; (5) the bound on the downside; (6) what the interface enables beyond this paper. Most first drafts invert 1 and a background sentence — delete the background sentence; ASPLOS readers do not need to be told memory matters.
A cross-layer paper defaults well to: motivation-with-evidence (measured, not asserted — a characterization figure beats three citations); design overview around one boundary diagram; per-layer mechanism sections; the interface section; evaluation ordered by the claim matrix; related work by lanes (asplos-related-work); then discussion of what the boundary change costs. Each community's reviewer should be able to find "their" section from the table of contents alone — a paper organized by implementation chronology instead forces reviewers to reconstruct the design, and annoyed reconstruction reads as "unclear writing" in reviews.
Because Major Revision is a standing outcome, write sentences that can absorb revision without rewiring: quantitative claims phrased with their scope ("across the 14-workload suite") extend gracefully when workloads are added; hard-coded superlatives ("the first", "the fastest") require re-litigation at every resubmission and are the first phrases a shepherd strikes.
text[Two-page audit] problem / insight-sentence / mechanism / evidence — each Y/N + fix [Insight sentence] <quoted verbatim> [Layer structure] per-layer subsections + interface section present: Y/N [Claim calibration] unbounded adjectives found: N · instrument attached per number: Y/N [Figure budget] figures: N · pages consumed: N · deletions/merges proposed [House rules] citations format / self-cite person / GenAI disclosure — pass/fail
Other measured skills in the registry, with their headline benchmark lift.