Learn about our computer systems research.
See our publications, hardware, and software.
See who we are
abstract is the research group of Asst. Prof. Brandon Lucia in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Our group does research at the intersection of computer architecture, computer systems, and programming languages. Our research focuses on improving the programmability, reliability, and efficiency of computing devices and systems. Our work cuts across the layers of the system stack, from the microarchitecture to the application, often touching on everything in between.
Our group does computer systems research spanning architecture, software systems, and programming languages. We are currently focused on intermittent computing, efficient edge computing, and developing computer systems for emerging small form-factor satellites. We release code and documentation on Github. Here is another full publication list
Our work is defining the software and hardware system stack for intermittent computing devices that harvest energy from their environment. We build real systems for use on Earth and far beyond.
SNAFU: An Ultra-Low-Power, Energy-Minimal CGRA Generation Framework and Architecture
Graham Gobieski, Oguz Aatli, Kenneth Mai, Brandon Lucia, and Nathan Beckmann
ISCA 2021 [paper][slides]
MANIC: A Vector-Dataflow Architecture for Ultra-Low-Power Embedded Systems
Graham Gobieski, Amolak Nagi, Nathan Serafin, Mehmet Meric Isgenc, Nathan Beckmann and Brandon Lucia
MICRO 2019 [paper][slides]
Music Credit: David Balatero
Transactional Concurrency Control for Intermittent,
Energy-Harvesting Computing Systems
Emily Ruppel and Brandon
Lucia
PLDI 2019 [paper][slides]
Supporting Peripherals in Intermittent Systems with Just-In-Time Checkpoints
Kiwan Maeng and Brandon Lucia
PLDI 2019 [paper][slides]
Intelligence Beyond the Edge: Inference on Intermittent Embedded Systems
Graham Gobieski, Brandon Lucia, and Nathan Beckmann
ASPLOS 2019 [paper][slides]
Adaptive Dynamic Checkpointing for Safe Efficient Intermittent Computing
Kiwan Maeng and Brandon Lucia
OSDI 2018 [paper][slides]
Migratory Trash Clouds
Emily Ruppel, Alexei Colin, and Brandon Lucia
ASPLOS "Wild and Crazy Ideas" 2018 [paper][slides]
Intermittent Deep Neural Network Inference
Graham Gobieski, Nathan Beckmann, and Brandon Lucia
SysML 2018 [paper]
Termination Checking and Task Decomposition for Task-Based Intermittent Programs
Alexei Colin, Brandon Lucia
CC 2018 [paper]
A Reconfigurable Energy Storage Architecture for Energy-harvesting Devices
Alexei Colin, Emily Ruppel, Brandon Lucia
ASPLOS 2018 Best Paper Award and IEEE MICRO Top Picks 2018 Hon. Mention [paper]
Alpaca: Intermittent Execution without Checkpoints
Kiwan Maeng, Alexei Colin, Brandon Lucia
OOPSLA 2017 [paper]
An Energy-Aware Debugger for Intermittently Powered Systems
Alexei Colin, Graham Harvey, Alanson Sample, Brandon Lucia
IEEE MICRO, 2017 vol. 37 - Top Picks in Computer Architecture [paper]
Intermittent Computing: Challenges and Opportunities
Brandon Lucia, Vignesh Balaji, Alexei Colin, Kiwan Maeng, and Emily Ruppel
SNAPL 2017 [paper] [press:AXIOS]
Chain: Tasks and Channels for Reliable Intermittent Programs
Alexei Colin, Brandon Lucia
OOPSLA 2016 [paper] [ press:UPI, phys.org, Energy Daily, TechDotMatrix, The Green Optimistic ]
An Energy-interference-free Hardware/Software Debugger for Intermittent Energy-harvesting Systems
Alexei Colin, Graham Harvey, Brandon Lucia, Alanson Sample
ASPLOS 2016 [paper][slides][Github release][press: Eurekalert, phys.org, Wireless Design Mag, Weekly Hot News]
Selected as an IEEE Micro Top Picks 2016 Paper
A Simpler, Safer Programming and Execution Model for Intermittent Systems
Brandon Lucia and Benjamin Ransford
PLDI 2015[paper][Try DINO!][video abstract]
We are developing system software and hardware architectures that make concurrent and parallel computer systems reliable and efficient. We research new parallel computer systems and architectures that make programming easier, that make important applications faster (especially graph computations), and that fill the emerging need for processing at the edge.
SOFRITAS: Serializable Ordering-Free Regions for Increasing Thread Atomicity Scalably
Christian Delozier, Ariel Eizenberg, Brandon Lucia, Joseph Devietti
ASPLOS 2018 [paper]
Flexible Support for Fast Parallel Commutative Updates Vignesh Balaji, Dhruva Tirumala, Brandon Lucia
ArXiv [Paper
Overcoming the Dataflow Limit on Parallelism with Structural Approximation
Vignesh Balaji, Brandon Lucia, and Radu Marculescu
WAX 2016 [paper]
Our group thrives because of the cooperation of a really awesome group of collaborators, PhDs, Masters, Undergraduate, and High School Students.
Lab goes to ISCA 2017 in Toronto (via Niagara Falls)
Group lunch outing in Summer 2021
Alexei Colin first employment: Researcher at the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California
Kiwan Maeng first employment: tenure-track assistant professor of CSE at Pennsylvania State University Vignesh Balaji first employment: Research Scientist in the Architecture Research Group at NVIDIAXingran "Maggie" Du (2020-2021) Chad Taylor (2020-2021) Shize Che (2020-2021) Fayyaz Zaidi (2020-2021) Hailang Liou (2019) Myles Sherman (2018-2019) David Hanna (2018-2019) Nathan Serafin (2018-2019) Amolak Nagi (2018-2019) Suyash Bhatt (2018) Hannah Tomio (2017) Akshay Kulkarni (2017) Akansha Patel(2017) Amanda Marano (2017-2018) Neil Ryan (2017-2018) Devon White (2017) Chris Meredith (2017) Zesheng Li (2016) Ridhi Surana (2016) Naveen Setlur (2015) Junhong Li (2015) Dhruva Tirumala (2015) Preeti Murthy (2015) Mark McElwaine (2015) Graham Harvey (Now an Imagineer @ Disney) [Spring 2015]
Our lab has an ongoing internship program with City Charter High School in downtown Pittsburgh. We accept high school interns nearing high school graduation to give them experience doing computer systems research
Dylan Joos (Junior at City Charter High School) [Summer 2019]
Hemank Kohli (CMU APEA program) [Summer 2018]
Beth Ann Kushner (Junior at City Charter High School) [Spring 2017]
Jessie Foley (Junior at City Charter High School) [Summer 2016]
Savi Medlang [Summer 2015]
The work in our group is possible through extremely generous from industry and government.
This work was supported in part by the CONIX Research Center, one of six centers in JUMP, a Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) program sponsored by DARPA.