
Christopher Batten
Professor
Computer Systems Laboratory
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
College of Engineering
Cornell University
office: 323 Rhodes Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853
phone: (607) 255-2672
email: cbatten cornell edu
I am a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a graduate field member of Computer Science at Cornell University. My research group is part of the Computer Systems Laboratory, and we largely work at the intersection of computer architecture, electronic design automation, and digital VLSI including projects on parallel programming frameworks, programmable accelerator design, interconnection networks, productive VLSI chip design methodologies, and architectures for future emerging technologies. Building prototype systems is an integral part of my research, as this is one of the best ways to validate assumptions, gain intuition about physical design issues, and provide platforms for future software research.
My research has been recognized with several awards including the ACM/IEEE MICRO Hall of Fame, a Cornell Engineering Research Excellence Award, an AFOSR Young Investigator Program award, an Intel Early Career Faculty Honor Program award, an NSF CAREER award, a DARPA Young Faculty Award, an IEEE Micro Top Picks selection, and MLCAD Best Artifact Award. My teaching has been recognized with the Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Excellence in Teaching, a Kenneth A. Goldman '71 Teaching Award, two Michael Tien '72 Excellence in Teaching Awards, and a James M. and Marsha D. McCormick Award for Outstanding Advising of First-Year Engineering Students.
In 2023–2024, I was a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley working in the SLICE Lab and a Visiting Professor at NVIDIA working in the Accelerator & VLSI Research Group. In 2018, I was a Visiting Scholar at the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge and a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall in Cambridge, UK. Prior to joining Cornell University, I received my Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I received an M.Phil. in Engineering as a Churchill Scholar at the University of Cambridge in 2000, and received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering as a Jefferson Scholar at the University of Virginia in 1999.
Recent News
- Apr 2025: Angela Cui was selected as a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellow – Congratulations!
- Mar 2025: Paper on optically connected multi-stack HBM modules for large language model training and inference published in IEEE Computer Architecture Letters
- Feb 2025: Paper describing our work using hybrid 2.5D/3D integration to scale co-packaged optical interconnects (with our collaborators Al Molnar at Cornell and Keren Bergman at Columbia) accepted to the IEEE Int'l Symp. on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS'25)
- Jan 2025: Course website for ECE 6745 Complex Digital ASIC Design now online
- Dec 2024: NORDTECH Microelectronics Commons proposal to support the Cornell Custom Silicon Systems (C2S2) project team is funded. C2S2 has now taped out four chips on SkyWater 130nm over two years. In the first year, they taped out an analog chip with two operational amplifiers and a digital chip with an FFT accelerator. In the second year, they taped out an analog chip with a flash ADC and a delta-sigma modulator and a digital chip with a much more efficient FFT accelerator and a specialized Scrub Jay bird call classifier. C2S2's end-of-semester presentations covered their recent work on dynamic and formal verification methodologies, mixed-signal design flows, FPGA emulation frameworks, RF transciever components, custom board design, fundraising, and a great video where members describe C2S2 in one word.
- Nov 2024: Yanghui Ou successfully defended his doctoral thesis titled "Methodologies, Architectures, and Prototypes for Scaling On- and Off-Chip Interconnects". Yanghui is heading to Google – Congratulations!
- Sep 2024: Presented our work on PyHDL-Eval, an LLM evaluation framework for hardware design using Python-embedded DSLs, at the 6th ACM/IEEE Int'l Symp. on Machine Learning for CAD (MLCAD'24) at Snowbird, UT; our paper received the best artifact award at the conference!
- Sep 2024: Max Doblas from the Universtat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) joins the Batten Reseach Group as a visiting scholar – Welcome!
- Aug 2024: Niklas Schmelzle and Elton Shih join the Batten Research Group – Welcome!
- Aug 2024: Course website for ECE 2300 Digital Logic and Computer Organization now online
- Aug 2024: Paper on a PyHDL-Eval, an LLM evaluation framework for hardware design using Python-embedded DSLs, (in collaboration with our colleagues at NVIDIA) accepted to the 6th ACM/IEEE Int'l Symp. on Machine Learning for CAD (MLCAD'24)
- Aug 2024: Attended the kick-off at UC Davis for our NSF Cyberinfrastructure for Sustained Scientific Innovation (CSSI) project focused on improving the gem5 simulator ecosystem
- Jun 2024: Finished a fantastic sabbatical in the Accelerator & VLSI Research Group at NVIDIA and am now heading back to Cornell
- Jun 2024: Twenty-five alumni of the Batten Research Group gathered for lunch in San Jose, CA. Attendees included BS, MEng, and PhD alumni from 2010 to 2024 who are now working at Google, Apple, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Samsung, Tesla, Microsoft, Samaya AI, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Southern California. Reconnecting with BRG alumni has been a highlight of the sabbatical!
- May 2024: Participated on a panel with Victor Peng (President, AMD) and Tianyue Yu (Co-Founder & CTO, Quanergy) and moderated by Subutai Ahmad (CEO, Numenta) to discuss the intersection of semiconductors and artificial intelligence as part of the Cornell Silicon Valley Presents series
- May 2024: Paper on a new highly scalable open-source RISC-V manycore architecture (in collaboration with our colleagues at Cornell University and the University of Washington) accepted to the 51st ACM/IEEE Int'l Symp. on Computer Architecture (ISCA'24)
- May 2024: Article on the Cornell Custom Silicon Systems (C2S2) project team published in the Cornell Chronicle
- All News
Teaching
- ECE 2300 Digital Logic and Computer Organization
- ECE 2400 Computer Systems Programming
- ECE 4750 Computer Architecture
- ECE 6745 Complex Digital ASIC Design
- ECE 5970 Special Topics: Chip-Level Interconnection Networks
Educational Outreach Activities
- CSMore: Week-Long Computer Systems Unit
- Curie Academy 2021: Week-Long Design Experience
- ENGRG 1050 Engineering Seminar: Computer Engineering Hands-On Experience
- ENGRG 1060 Explorations in Engineering: Computer Engineering Unit
- Curie Academy 2014: Week-Long Design Experience
Research Group
- Nick Cebry (MS/PhD)
- Derin Ozturk (MS/PhD)
- Niklas Schmelzle (MS/PhD)
- Elton Shih (MS/PhD)
- Aidan McNay (MEng)
- Jikai Wang (MEng)
- Weixuan Sun (MEng)
- Zhangxiao Huang (MEng)
- Lawrence Atienza (MEng)
- Angela Cui (BS)
- Barry Lyu (BS)
- Parker Schless (BS)
- Vayun Tiwari (BS)
- Nicole Li (BS)
- Amy Le (BS)
- Natalia Pope (BS)
- Anjelica Bian (BS)
- Irwin Wang (BS)
- Zephan Sanghani (BS)
- Former Members
Research Sponsors
- National Science Foundation: CSSI'23, PPoSS'21, SHF'20/'15, E2CDA'17
- National Science Foundation: CRI'15/'11, XPS'13, EAGER'11, CAREER'12
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency: PIPES'21, POSH'18, SDH'18, CRAFT'16, YFA'12
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research: YIP'15
- Semiconductor Research Corporation: JUMP'18, E2CDA'17
- NORDTECH Microelectronics Commons: C2S2 project team
- Intel Corporation: research funding and equipment donation
- Facebook: research funding
- NVIDIA: research funding and equipment donation
- Xilinx: research funding and CAD tool donation
- Cornell Engineering Learning Initiatives: undergraduate research funding
- Advanced Micro Devices: undergraduate research funding
- Synopsys, Cadence, Mentor: CAD tool donation
- ARM: physical IP donation
- GitHub: hosted software donations
Professional Activities
- Conference PC Chair: IEEE Micro TopPicks'23
- Conference PC Member: ISCA'25/'22/'17/'15/'13, IEEE Micro TopPicks'22/'16, MICRO'20/'15
- Conference PC Member: SC'17/'16, HPCA'16, PPoPP'13, ASPLOS'11
- Conference External Reviewer: ISCA, ASPLOS, MICRO, HPCA, DAC, SIGMETRICS
- Conference Organizing Committee Member: HPCA'14
- Workshop PC Member: WDDD'16, GPGPU'16, NOPE'15, WDDD'15, GPGPU'14
- Workshop Co-Organizer: SIGARCH Visioning Workshop on Open and Agile HW Design, WARP'15, WINDS'10
- Tutorial Co-Organizer: PyMTL'19, PyMTL/Pydgin'15
- Associate Editor: IEEE Micro'20–23
- Journal Reviewer: IEEE Micro, CACM, JETCAS, TCAD, TVLSI, TACO, CAL, MICPRO, COMPUTER
- Book Reviewer: Morgan and Claypool Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture
- Member: IEEE Computer Society, ACM SIGARCH