
Zhiru Zhang
Associate Professor
Computer Systems Laboratory
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
College of Engineering
Cornell University
office: 320 Rhodes Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853
phone: (607) 255-5954
email: zhiruz -at- cornell.edu
I am an Associate Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University and a member of the Computer Systems Laboratory. My current research investigates new algorithms, methodologies, and design automation tools for building heterogeneous computing systems. More concretely, my recent publications focus on the topics of high-level synthesis, hardware specialization for machine learning, and programming models for software-defined FPGAs. My work has been recognized with a Facebook Research Award, a Google Faculty Research Award, the DAC Under-40 Innovators Award, the Rising Professional Achievement Award from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, a DARPA Young Faculty Award, the IEEE CEDA Ernest S. Kuh Early Career Award, an NSF CAREER Award, the Ross Freeman Award for Technical Innovation from Xilinx, three Best Paper Awards from FPGA (2022, 2021, 2019), Top Picks in Hardware and Embedded Security (2020), a Best Short Paper Award from FCCM (2018), a Best Paper Award from the ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems (2012), and multiple best paper nominations (DAC'21, FPGA'21,'18,'17, ICCAD'09). My paper on SDC-based scheduling is inducted into the ACM/SIGDA TCFPGA Hall of Fame for the class of 2022. On the teaching side, I received the Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Michael Tien'72 Excellence in Teaching Award from College of Engineering.
Prior to joining Cornell, I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Upon graduation, I co-founded AutoESL Design Technologies, Inc. based on of my dissertation research at UCLA on high-level synthesis (HLS). AutoESL was acquired by Xilinx and its HLS tool later became Vivado HLS (now Vitis HLS). I have a B.S. in Computer Science from Peking University, and an M.S. in Computer Science from UCLA.
Teaching
- ENGRD/ECE 2300 [site]: Digital Logic and Computer Organization (Spring'14, '15, '16, '17, '18, '21, '22)
- ECE 5775 [site]: High-Level Digital Design Automation (Fall'13, '14, '15, '16, '17, '18)
- ENGRG 1050: Freshman Engineering Seminar (Fall'13, '17)
- ECE 5950: Special Topics on High-Level Digital Design Automation (Spring'13)
News
- Organized the first hybrid FCCM conference at Cornell Tech (5/18)
- RapidStream covered by EE Journal (5/9)
- Invited talk on binary neural networks "at" NSF A3D3 Institute (5/2)
- Keynote paper on FPGA HLS published in ACM TRETS (4/22)
- Invited talk on near-memory sparse processing "at" DATE'22 (3/18)
- IMpress accepted to FCCM'22 (3/12)
- PokeBNN accepted to CVPR'22 (3/2)
- MgX and SoftVN accepted to ISCA'22 (3/2)
- RapidStream received FPGA'22 Best paper Award (3/1)
- SDC scheduling inducted into ACM/SIGDA TCFPGA Hall of Fame (3/1)
- Dagger received IEEE Micro Top Picks 2022 Honorable Mention (1/10)
- HeteroFlow, HiSparse, and RapidStream accepted to FPGA'22 (11/22/21)
- Invited talk on efficient deep learning "at" Rutgers [video] (11/18/21)
- Sean successfully defended his dissertation! (11/9/21)
- Invited talk on low-bitwidth neural nets "at" ICCAD Halo Workshop (11/4/21)
- BulletTrain accepted to NeurIPS'21 (9/28/21)
- MLCAD'21 plenary talk on ML for agile hardware design [video] (9/3/21)
- Circuit distillation nominated for DAC'21 best paper (7/27/21)
- GraphLily accepted to ICCAD'21 (7/13/21)
- SPADE accepted to ICML'21 (5/8/21)
- Yuan successfully defended his dissertation! (3/17/21)
- AutoBridge won FPGA'21 Best Paper Award (3/2/21)
- Academia lecture on agile hardware specialization "at" Qualcomm (1/29/21)
- FracBNN and AutoBridge selected as FPGA'21 best paper candidates (1/13/21)
- Group channel live on Youtube (12/4/20)
- ECE Colloquium talk on accelerator synthesis "at" Univ. of Minnesota (11/19/20)
- Dagger accepted to ASPLOS'21 (11/18/20)
- Invited talk on joint ML-hardware specialization "at" Google Brain (11/17/20)
- CNN side channel leaks selected as Top Picks in Hardware and Embedded Security'20 (11/15/20)
- Samsung Forum talk on joint ML-hardware specialization [video] (10/27/20)
- Ecenur invited to 2020 EECS Rising Stars Workshop (10/8/20)
- Jordan received 2020 SRC TECHCON Student Presentation Award (10/6/20)/li>
- Invited talk on accelerator synthesis "at" Google Brain (8/5/20)
- IWLS'20 opening keynote on accelerator synthesis [video] (7/27/20)
- More news
Services
- General Chair of 30th IEEE Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines (FCCM 2022)
- Program Chair of 31st International Symposium on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA 2023)
Research Group
[site] [github] [youtube] [linkedin]
- Ecenur Ustun (MS/PhD, started FA'16)
- Hanchen Jin (MS/PhD, started SP'18)
- Yuwei Hu (MS/PhD, started SP'18)
- Chenhui Deng (MS/PhD, started FA'18)
- Shaojie Xiang (MS/PhD, started FA'18)
- Yichi Zhang (MS/PhD, started FA'18)
- Jie Liu (MS/PhD, started FA'19)
- Jordan Dotzel (MS/PhD, started FA'19, with Prof. Mohamed Abdelfattah)
- Nikita Lazarev (MS/PhD, started FA'19, with Prof. Christina Delimitrou)
- Zichao Yue (MS/PhD, started SU'20)
- Yixiao Du (MS/PhD, started SU'20)
- Yaohui Cai (MS/PhD, started SP'21, with Prof. Chris De Sa)
- Andrew Butt (MS/PhD, started FA'21)
- Jiajie Li (MS/PhD, started FA'21)
- Hongzheng Chen (MS/PhD, started FA'21)
- Niansong Zhang (MS/PhD, started FA'21)
- Dingyi Dai (MS, started FA'21)
- Dr. Debjit Pal (PostDoc, 2019-)
- Dr. Zhongyuan Zhao (PostDoc, 2020-)
- Dr. Yi-Hsiang (Sean) Lai (PhD, 2016-2021) now with AWS AI, Santa Clara, CA
- Dr. Yuan Zhou (PhD, 2015-2021, dissertation) now with AWS AI, Santa Clara, CA
- Dr. Nitish Srivastava (PhD, 2014-2020, dissertation) now with Google, Mountain View, CA
- Dr. Ritchie Zhao (PhD, 2014-2019, dissertation) now with Microsoft, Redmond, WA
- Prof. Cunxi Yu (PostDoc, 2018-2019) now with University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
- Dr. Zhenghong (John) Jiang (PostDoc, 2016-2019) now with Cadence, San Jose, CA
- Dr. Steve Dai (PhD, 2013-2018, dissertation) now with NVIDIA Research, Santa Clara, CA
- Dr. Gai Liu (PhD, 2013-2018, dissertation) now with TikTok, Mountain View, CA
- Dr. Mingxing Tan (PostDoc, 2013-2015) now with Google Brain, Mountain View, CA