Engineering machines that learn faster, compute more efficiently, operate safer, program easier, and integrate more responsibly (yes we do all that!)
A Few Recent Projects
Security from the Gates Up
Hardware vulnerabilities lurk in the wild
Security and correctness issues continue to plague our systems, but increasingly it is the hardware at fault. Given that hardware is impossible to "patch", we need to find new techniques that help us get our systems right the first time.
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Hardware from Python
Screenshot of PyRTL in action
Building hardware can be as fun as coding again! PyRTL provides a collection of classes for register-transfer level design, simulation, tracing, and testing suitable for teaching and research. Simplicity, usability, clarity, and extensibility rather than performance at all costs.
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Neuro-Inspired Temporal Logic
Analog race-logic prototype in Dr. Madhavan's hand
Brains have much to teach us about performing energy efficient computations. Our work on "race logic" has led to a class of neuro-inspired delay coded designs with orders of magnitude lower energy per computation as compared to prior approaches.
More InfoA Couple of Recent Papers
- Metallic Toxicity as a Consideration for Future Computing Paradigms. Pranjali Jain, Timothy Sherwood, Jonathan Balkind. npj Unconventional Computing, June 2026.
- Fungible Memories for Automated Technology Mapping and Re-targeting. Zachary D. Sisco, Sirui Kong, Daniel Ruelas-Petrisko, Jingtao Xia, Jack Springer, Varun Rao, Sophia Wang, Gus Henry Smith, Ben Hardekopf, Jonathan Balkind. Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages (PLDI), June 2026.
- Delay-Space Arithmetic and Architecture. Rhys Gretsch, Peiyang Song, Advait Madhavan, Jeremy Lau, Timothy Sherwood. IEEE Micro: Micro's Top Picks from Computer Architecture Conferences, July 2025. (IEEE Micro Top Pick)
- Single Spike Artificial Neural Networks. Rhys Gretsch, Michael Beyeler, Jeremy Lau, Timothy Sherwood. Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), June 2025.
- Control Logic Synthesis: Drawing the Rest of the OWL. Zachary D Sisco, Andrew David Alex, Zechen Ma, Yeganeh Aghamohammadi, Boming Kong, Benjamin Darnell, Timothy Sherwood, Ben Hardekopf, Jonathan Balkind. International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS), April 2024.
Advanced computer system design is not an island, but rather it sits between algorithms, machine learning, operating systems, compilers, circuits, networks, and security; by looking at computer architecture and embedded systems through the eyes of its application we can enact the biggest change.
