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
- 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 Reesarch 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
- Apr 2024: Angela Cui received undergraduate research funding from the Cornell Engineering Learning Initiatives to explore customized computer architectures for millimeter-scale vision systems
- Mar 2024: Peitian Pan successfully defended his doctoral thesis titled "Addressing the Verification Challenge of Agile Hardware Methodologies". Peitian is heading to Google – Congratulations!
- Mar 2024: Aidan McNay was selected as a Merrill Presidential Scholar, which is awarded to the most outstanding graduating seniors at Cornell – Congratulations!
- Feb 2024: Paper on supporting a virtual vector instruction set on a commercial compute-in-SRAM accelerator published in IEEE Computer Architecture Letters
- Jan 2024: Article on NORDTECH published in the Cornell Chronicle. NORDTECH is a recently funded ME Commons Technology Hub funded through the CHIPS and Science Act which included our exemplar research project on AI hardware.
- Jan 2024: Continuing sabbatical as a Visiting Professor in the ASIC & VLSI Research Group at NVIDIA
- Jan 2024: Attended the SLICE Lab Retreat in Santa Cruz, CA; a wonderful way to finish the first phase of the sabbatical
- Nov 2023: Derin Ozturk joined the Batten Research Group – Welcome!
- Nov 2023: Attended the RISC-V Summit in Santa Clara, CA and the NSF CHIPS Education and Workforce Development Convening in Washington, DC
- Oct 2023: Paper on supporting a virtual vector instruction set on a commercial compute-in-SRAM accelerator is accepted to the 2nd Workshop on Democratizing Domain-Specific Accelerators (WDDSA'23) to be held in conjunction with MICRO-56
- Oct 2023: National Science Foundation (NSF) proposal to advance computer systems research capability, reproducibility, and sustainability with the gem5 simulator ecosystem (led by Jason Lowe-Power at UC Davis and with our collaborators at the University of Washington, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Kansas, and Georgia Tech) is funded as part of the NSF Cyberinfrastructure for Sustained Scientific Innovation (CSSI) program
- All News
Teaching
- ECE 2300 Digital Logic and Computer Organization
- ECE 2400 Computer Systems Programming
- ECE 4750 Computer Architecture
- ECE 5745 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
- Yanghui Ou (MS/PhD)
- 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)
- Barry Lyu (BS)
- Parker Schless (BS)
- Vayun Tiwari (BS)
- Nicole Li (BS)
- Amy Le (BS)
- Natalia Pope (BS)
- Anjelica Bian (BS)
- Irwin Wang (BS)
- Max Doblas (Visiting Scholar)
- 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
- 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