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Zishen Wan 
I am a Postdoc Fellow at Harvard University, working with Prof. Vijay Janapa Reddi.
I received my Ph.D. from Georgia Tech (2025), advised by Prof. Arijit
Raychowdhury and Prof. Tushar Krishna. My
research interests lie at the intersection of computer architecture, systems, and VLSI, with a focus
on (1) cross-layer system-architecture-silicon co-design for embodied and physical AI, and (2)
agentic AI for computing system design.
My research has been supported by SRC JUMP centers CoCoSys and CBRIC, NSF, Qualcomm Fellowship,
Baidu Fellowship, and CRNCH PhD Fellowship, and involves close collaboration with industry (e.g.,
IBM, TSMC, Intel, Google) and academia. My work has been recognized with Best Paper Awards at DAC,
CAL, and SRC JUMP2.0, First Place in DAC PhD Forum, First Place in ACM Student Research Competition,
and IEEE Micro Top Picks honorable mention. I was selected as 2023 ML and
Systems Rising Star and 2024 Cyber-Physical Systems
Rising Star.
I am on the academic job market for the 2025-2026 cycle, and
would appreciate any info about potential opportunities!
Google Scholar
 / 
CV  / 
LinkedIn  / 
GitHub  / 
Twitter
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Email:
zishenwan@seas.harvard.edu
zishenwan@gatech.edu
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Research Interests
I am a computer architect and SoC designer developing systems and hardware for physical AI. My
research lies at the intersection of computer architecture, VLSI, and physical intelligence, with
a focus on co-design systems, architectures, and solid-state hardware for autonomous machines and
neuro-symbolic AI, enabling next-generation physical intelligence with real-time performance,
energy efficiency, reliability, and scalability.
- System:
- Architecture:
- Solid-State Hardware:
A summary of our recent works on Efficient
Neuro-Symbolic AI Computing and Autonomous Machine Computing.
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News
- [Jan. 2026] [Paper] Our work "A Programmable Heterogeneous SoC with RRAM/SRAM for Accelerating Neuro-Symbolic AI" accepted to JSSC.
- [Dec. 2025] [Award] Our works
ReCA
and
Compositional Neuro-Symbolic System
selected as 2025 JUMP 2.0 Best Papers by DARPA and SRC.
- [Nov. 2025] I defended PhD thesis "Tailored Computing: Cross-Layer System, Architecture,
and Silicon Co-Design for Physical AI". Sincere thanks to my committee Drs. Arijit
Raychowdhury, Tushar Krishna, Vijay Janapa
Reddi, Pradip
Bose, Jan M.
Rabaey, Celine
Lin, and Hyesoon Kim, and
to my colleagues, friends, and family!
- [Nov. 2025] [Workshop] We will oragnize a workshop
Architecture 2.0: AI for Computing Systems Design
at ASPLOS 2026.
- [Nov. 2025] [Paper] Our work "REASON: Accelerating
Probabilistic Logical Reasoning for Neuro-Symbolic Intelligence" accepted to HPCA
2026.
- [Nov. 2025] [Paper] Our work "CREATE: Cross-Layer
Resilience Optimization for Efficient Embodied AI Systems" accepted to ASPLOS
2026.
- [Nov. 2025] [Paper] Two works "FortiSky" on autonomous
machine reliability (with IBM research) and "SATA" on GenAI hardware optimization (with TSMC
Research) accepted to DATE 2026.
- [Oct. 2025] [Talk] I'm selected to present
Tailored Computing: Domain-Specific Architecture for Embodied Intelligence
at MICRO PhD Forum.
- [Sep. 2025] [Talk] I give a talk on
System Implications and Opportunities for Compositional
Neuro-Symbolic-Probabilistic AI
at Georgia Tech.
- [Sep. 2025] [Teaching] I co-develop and serve as course
staff for Harvard CS249r
Architecture 2.0: Agentic AI for Computing Systems Design.
- [Jul. 2025] [Paper] Our work
RTGS: Real-Time 3D Gaussian Splatting SLAM via Multi-Level Redundancy
Reduction
accepted to MICRO 2025.
- [Jul. 2025] [Talk] I give talks on
Demystifying Neuro-Symbolic AI for SW/HW Co-Design
at University of Notre Dame and Purdue University.
- [Jun. 2025] [Award] I receive First Place in DAC
PhD Forum for my research on
Tailored Computing for Embodied Intelligence
.
- [Jun. 2025] [Paper] Our work
Compositional AI Beyond LLMs: System Implications of Neuro-Symbolic-Prob Arch
accepted to ASPLOS 2026.
- [Jun. 2025] [Paper] Our work
HyDra: SOT-CAM Based Vector Symbolic Macro
accepted to ICCAD 2025.
- [Jun. 2025] [Talk] Invited talk on
Efficient and Safe Embodied Intelligence: From Benchmarking to Co-Design
at ISCA Arch4EAI Workshop.
- [Jun. 2025] [Service] Our interview with Mengjia on
Sipping Matcha of Security: A Fireside Chat With Mengjia Yan
appears in IEEE Micro.
- [Apr. 2025] [Paper] Our work
Efficient Processing of Neuro-Symbolic AI: A Tutorial and Cross-Layer
Co-Design Case Study
accepted to NeuS 2025 and selected as oral
presentation.
- [Apr. 2025] [Talk] I give a talk on
CogSys
neuro-symbolic co-design at Google.
- [Mar. 2025] [Award] I receive Best Poster
Award at SRC JUMP2.0 CoCoSys Center on "Bridging Learning and Reasoning: A
Cross-Layer Software-Architecture-FPGA-SoC Approach for Neuro-Symbolic AI".
- [Mar. 2025] [Talk] I give talks on
ReCA
embodied AI at Georgia Tech Computer Architecture Research Seminar and SRC JUMP2.0
CoCoSys.
- [Mar. 2025] [Paper] Two works
EmbodiedPerf
on embodied AI system characterization and
SCALE-Sim v3
accepted to ISPASS 2025.
- [Feb. 2025] [Talk] I give a talk on
Tailored Computing: Domain-Specific Architectures for Neuro-Symbolic and
Embodied Agents
at UIUC.
- [Feb. 2025] [Paper] Two works
NSFlow
on neurosymbolic FPGA prototype and
ReaLM
on LLM hardware reliability accepted to DAC 2025.
- [Feb. 2025] [Paper] Two works
ReCA
on embodied AI system acceleration and
OctoCache
on OctoMap acceleration accepted to ASPLOS 2025.
- [Feb. 2025] [Award] I am awarded Baidu
Fellowship (10 awardees worldwide).
- [Jan. 2025] [Award] Our works
CogSys
and
Neuro-Symbolic Architecture
selected as 2024 JUMP 2.0 Best Papers by DARPA and SRC.
- [Jan. 2025] [Talk] I give guest lecture and talk on
Neurosymbolic AI Co-Design
at Georgia Tech ECE8893 (Parallel Programming for FPGAs) and Georgia Tech Computer
Architecture Research Seminar, and a talk on
Robotic Computing Co-Design
at University of Washington.
- [Dec. 2024] [Award] I am selected as
Spotlight Research Scholar
by DARPA SRC JUMP2.0 CoCoSys Center.
- [Dec. 2024] [Service] I serve on the Program Committe of
MLSys'25 and Artifact Evaluation Committee of HPCA'25.
- [Nov. 2024] [Paper] Our work
CogSys: Efficient Neurosymbolic Cognition System via Algorithm-Hardware
Co-Design
accepted to HPCA 2025.
- [Nov. 2024] [Award] I receive 3rd place in ACM
SIGMICRO Student Research Competition at MICRO 2024.
- [Nov. 2024] [Talk] I give talks on
Embodied Robotic Computing
at MICRO RoboArch workshop and UCF CompArch seminar,
3D Integration
and
Neurosymbolic Co-design
at Harvard Nano-Design Lab, and
Tailored Computing for Autonomous Machines
at Chinese Academy of Sciences.
- [Nov. 2024] [Book] Our book Embodied AI Robotic
Systems is released, exploring embodied AI from computing and system
perspectives.
- [Sep. 2024] [Award] I receive Best Presentation
Award at Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC)
TECHCON 2024.
- [Aug. 2024] [Paper] Our work
Towards Efficient Neuro-Symbolic AI: From Workload Analysis to Hardware Arch
accepted to IEEE TCASAI.
- [Aug. 2024] [Talk] I give a talk on
MulBERRY
and
CIM Adaptation
at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
- [Aug. 2024] [Talk] I give a talk on "Demystifying
Neuro-Symbolic AI Computing" at University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
- [Jul. 2024] [Paper] Our work
Thinking and Moving: Efficient Computing for Cooperative Embodied Systems
accepted to ICCAD 2024.
- [May. 2024] [Paper] Our work
Neuro-Symbolic Architecture Meets LLMs: A Memory-Centric Perspective
accepted to ESWEEK 2024.
- [May. 2024] [Paper] Our work
Benchmarking Test-Time DNN Adaptation at Edge with Compute-In-Memory
accepted to ACM JATS.
- [May. 2024] [Talk]
H3DFact
and
MemQuant
selected into SRC TECHCON 2024; Presented our recent works in
neuro-symbolic AI
and
autonomous machine computing
at ASPLOS'24 EMC2 workshop, MLSys'24 YPS, Berkeley NeuS workshop, and SRC CoCoSys
center.
- [Apr. 2024] [Award] I am selected as 2024
Cyber-Physical Systems Rising Star.
- [Apr. 2024] [Paper] Our work
The Vulnerability-Adaptive Protection Paradigm Toward Reliable Autonomous
Machines
accepted to Communications of the ACM.
- [Apr. 2024] [Award] Our team
CipherFlitFort
is selected for Georgia Tech CREATE-X Award.
- [Apr. 2024] [Service] I start to serve on the steering
committee of Computer Architecture Student Association (CASA).
- [Mar. 2024] [Award] I receive Best Poster
Award at DARPA SRC JUMP2.0 Center for Co-Design of Cognitive Systems (CoCoSys).
- [Mar. 2024] [Paper] Our work
Towards Cognitive AI Systems: Workload and Characterization of Neuro-Symbolic
AI
accepted to ISPASS 2024.
- [Feb. 2024] [Paper] Our work
Algorithm-Hardware Co-Design of Distribution-Aware Logarithmic-Posit Encodings
accepted to DAC 2024.
- [Feb. 2024] [Service] I serve on the program committee of
CAV@ASPLOS'24, artifact evaluation committee of ISCA'24, media team of ISSCC'24.
- [Jan. 2024] [Paper] Our work
RobotPerf Benchmark
accepted to ICRA 2024.
- [Dec. 2023] [Book] Our book
Machine Learning Systems with TinyML
is released. By the Community, For the Community.
- [Dec. 2023] [Award] I receive Best Poster
Award at 2023 IBM IEEE AI Compute Symposium.
- [Nov. 2023] [Paper] Our two works
MulBERRY
and
ORIANNA
accepted to ASPLOS 2024.
- [Nov. 2023] [Paper] Our work
Heterogeneous 3D Integrated CIM for Factorization with Holographic Representations
accepted to DATE 2024.
- [Nov. 2023] [Award] I receive ISSCC 2024 Student
Travel Award.
- [Oct. 2023] [Paper] Our work
Silent Data Corruption in Robot Operating System
accepted to IEEE TCAD.
- [Sep. 2023] [Award] We release
RobotPerf Benchmark
and win Best Paper Award at Robotics Benchmarking Workshop at
IROS 2023.
- [Aug. 2023] [Service] I serve on the Artifact Evaluation
Committee of MICRO'23.
- [Jul. 2023] [Paper] Our work
SEE-MCAM: Scalable Multi-bit FeFET CAM for Energy
Efficient Associative Search
accepted to ICCAD 2023.
- [Jul. 2023] [Paper] Our work
A Heterogeneous RRAM In-memory and SRAM Near-memory SoC for Fused Frame and
Event-based Target Identification and Tracking
accepted to JSSC.
- [May. 2023] [Award] I am selected as 2023 ML and
Systems Rising Star.
- [May. 2023] [Paper] Our work
VPP: The Vulnerability-Proportional Protection Paradigm Towards Reliable
Autonomous Machines
accepted to 5th Domain Specific System Architecture (DOSSA-5) Workshop at ISCA
2023.
- [May. 2023] [Paper] Our work
Towards Cognitive AI Systems: A Survey and Prospective on Neuro-Symbolic AI
accepted to Next-Gen AI System Workshop at MLSys 2023.
- [May. 2023] [Talk] I give invited talks and poster
presentations on
Co-Design for Efficient and Resilient Autonomous Machine Computing
at Georgia Tech EIC Lab, Georgia Tech Chips Day, CoCoSys Annual Review, CRNCH Annual
Review, and CRIDC'23.
- [Apr. 2023] [Award] I am awarded Georgia Tech Roger
P. Webb Graduate Research Assistant Excellence Award.
- [Apr. 2023] [Service] I serve on the Artifact Evaluation
Committee of ISCA'23, Reviewer of IEEE TBioCAS.
- [Feb. 2023] [Paper] Our work
BERRY: Bit Error Robustness for Energy-Efficient RL-Based
Autonomous Systems
accepted to DAC 2023.
- [Jan. 2023] [Award] Our work
AutoPilot
is selected as Honorable Mention in IEEE Micro Top Picks 2023.
- [Dec. 2022] [Paper] Two papers on
MAVFI: An End-to-End Fault Analysis Framework with Anomaly Detection and
Recovery for Micro Aerial Vehicles
and
Real-Time Fully Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Lane Detection in
Autonomous Driving
accepted to DATE 2023.
- [Nov. 2022] [Award] I received 1st place
in ACM/SIGBED Student Research Competition (SRC).
- [Oct. 2022] [Service] We founded MLPerf (MLCommons)
Resilience and Robustness Research Working Group.
- [Oct. 2022] [Paper] Our work
A 73.53TOPS/W 14.74TOPS Heterogeneous RRAM In-Memory and SRAM Near-Memory SoC
for Hybrid Frame and Event-Based Target Tracking
accepted to ISSCC 2023.
- [Oct. 2022] [Talk] I give a talk on "Efficient SW/HW
Co-Design for Robotic Computing" at 2022 IBM AI Compute Symposium.
- [Sep. 2022] [Award] I am awarded Qualcomm
Fellowship.
- [Sep. 2022] [Service] I serve on the Artifact Evaluation
Committee of ASPLOS'23, IISWC'22, MICRO'22, ASPLOS'22. Served on the Technical Program
Committee of NPC'22.
- [Jul. 2022] [Paper] Our work
Analyzing and Improving Resilience of Autonomous Systems
accepted to ICCAD 2022.
- [Jul. 2022] [Paper] Our work
Automatic Domain-Specific SoC Design for Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
accepted to MICRO 2022.
- [Jun. 2022] [Paper] Our work
QuaRL: Quantization for Fast and Sustainable RL
accepted to TMLR, featured by
Google AI
.
- [Jun. 2022] [Talk] I give a talk on the plenary panel
Reliability of Autonomous Machines
at COMPSAC 2022.
- [Apr. 2022] [Award] I am selected as DAC Young
Fellow at DAC 2022.
- [Apr. 2022] [Paper] Our work
Robotic Computing on FPGAs: Current Progress, Challenges, and Opportunities
accepted to AICAS 2022.
- [Mar. 2022] [Paper] Our work
Roofline Model for UAVs: A Bottleneck Analysis Tool for Onboard Compute
Characterization of Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
accepted to ISPASS 2022.
- [Feb. 2022] [Paper] Our work
Improving Compute In-Memory ECC Reliability
accepted to DAC 2022.
- [Jan. 2022] [Paper] Our work
Energy-Efficient Runtime-Reconfigurable Accelerator for
Robotic Localization Systems
accepted to CICC 2022.
- [Jan. 2022] [Award] I am awarded CRNCH PhD
Fellowship, supported by Center for Novel Computing Hierarchies.
- [Jan. 2022] [Paper] Invited Paper
Circuit and System Technologies for Efficient Edge Robotics
appeared at ASP-DAC 2022.
- [Dec. 2021] [Award] I am selected as DAC Young
Fellow, and win Best Presentation Award at DAC 2021.
- [Nov. 2021] [Paper] Our work
FRL-FI: Transient Fault Analysis for Federated RL-Based
Navigation Systems
accepted to DATE 2022.
- [Aug. 2021] [Talk] I give a talk on "Fault Analysis for
Autonomous Machines Reliability" at Center for Brain-Inspired Computing (C-BRIC), a JUMP
Research Center cosponsored by SRC and DARPA.
- [Jun. 2021] [Book] Our book
Robotic Computing on FPGAs
published in Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture. Some key
observations of the book published as a
survey paper
in IEEE CAS-M 2021.
- [Apr. 2021] [Paper] Two papers
An Energy-Efficient Visual System for Autonomous Machines on FPGA Platform
and
iELAS: An ELAS-Based Energy-Efficient Accelerator for Real-Time Stereo
Matching on FPGA Platform
accepted to AICAS 2021.
- [Mar. 2021] [Paper] Our work
ActorQ: Quantization for Actor-Learner Distributed RL
accepted to ICLR HEAT Workshop 2021.
- [Feb. 2021] [Paper] Our work
Analyzing and Improving Fault Tolerance of Navigation System
accepted to DAC 2021.
- [Dec. 2020] [Award] Paper
The Sky Is Not the Limit: A Visual Performance Model for Cyber-Physical
Co-Design in Autonomous Machines
is selected as Best Paper of IEEE CAL, and will be presented in
HPCA 2021.
- [Dec. 2020] [Paper] Our work
A Survey of FPGA-Based Robotic Computing
accepted to IEEE CAS-M 2021.
- [Sept. 2020] [Talk] I give a talk at Georgia Tech Integrated
Circuits and System Lab on "Edge Computing on Aerial Robots".
- [Jul. 2020] [Award] Paper
Algorithm-Hardware Co-Design of Adaptive Floating-Point Encodings for
Resilient Deep Learning Inference
wins Best Paper Award of DAC 2020.
- [Jul. 2020] [Talk] I give a talk at Harvard VLSI-Arch Lab on
"Micro Aerial Vehicle Fault Injection and Detection".
- [Mar. 2020] [Paper] Our work
The Sky Is Not the Limit: A Visual Performance Model for Cyber-Physical
Co-Design in Autonomous Machines
accepted to IEEE CAL.
- [Feb. 2020] [Paper] Our work
Algo-HW Co-Design of Adaptive Floating-Point Encodings for
Resilient DL Inference
accepted to DAC 2020.
- [Jan. 2020] [Paper] Our work
Quantized Reinforcement Learning (QuaRL)
accepted to MLSys ReCoML Workshop 2020.
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Robotic Computing on FPGAs
Shaoshan Liu,
Zishen Wan,
Bo Yu,
Yu Wang
Editor: Natalie Enright Jerger
Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture (Morgan & Claypool Publishers), pp.1-218, Jun
2021
Book
This book provides a thorough overview of the state-of-the-art FPGA-based robotic computing
accelerator designs and summarizes their adopted optimized techniques.
This book consists of ten chapters, delving into the details of how FPGAs have been utilized in
robotic perception, localization, planning, and multi-robot collaboration tasks. In addition to
individual robotic tasks, this book provides detailed descriptions of how FPGAs have been used
in robotic products, including commercial autonomous vehicles and space exploration robots. Some
key observations of this book has been published as a survey
paper in IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine, 2021.
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Machine Learning Systems - Principles and Practices of Engineering Artificially
Intelligent Systems
Vijay Janapa Reddi,
Matthew Stewart,
Ikechukwu Uchendu,
Itai Shapira,
Marcelo Rovai,
Jayson Lin,
Jeffrey Ma,
Korneel Van den Berghe,
Zishen Wan,
Srivatsan Krishnan,
Shvetank Prakash,
Mark Mazumder,
Colby Banbury,
Jason Yik,
Jessica Quaye, ...
(contributor
list)
Book /
GitHub
This book is your gateway to the fast-paced world of AI systems through the lens of TinyML.
This book aims to demystify the process of developing complete ML systems suitable for
deployment - spanning key phases like data collection, model design, optimization, acceleration,
security hardening, and integration.
Crucial systems considerations like reliability, privacy, responsible AI, and solution
validation are also explored in depth. This book is led by Prof. Vijay Janapa Reddi and
resonates with Harvard TinyML course. Join us in this open-source collective effort - by the
community, with the community, for the community.
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Embodied AI Robotic Systems
Yiming Gan,
Bo Yu,
Zishen Wan,
Shaoshan Liu
Publishing House of Electronics Industry, pp.1-224, Nov 2024
Book (In Chinese)
This book provides a comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art embodied AI robotic systems,
advancing toward artificial general intelligence. It comprises 14 chapters.
Part 1 (chapters 1-2) introduces embodied AI robots background and recent developments.
Part 2 (chapters 3-6) explores key systems for embodied robots, including perception,
localization, planning, and control.
Part 3 (chapters 7-9) deeps dive into LLMs for robotic frameworks.
Part 4 (chapters 10-13) discusses efficiency, robustness, safety, and data challenges in
embodied AI, along with solutions.
Part 5 (chapter 14) demonstrates embodied robotic applications.
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Tailored Computing: Domain-Specific Systems and Hardware for Embodied Autonomous
Intelligence
Zishen Wan,
Vijay Janapa Reddi,
Tushar Krishna,
Arijit Raychowdhury
Design Automation Conference (DAC) PhD Forum, 2025
First Place, ACM/IEEE DAC PhD Forum
Poster /
Media
This poster presents tailored computing methodology for cross-layer software-system-hardware
co-design to develop efficient, reliable, and adaptable architectures for embodied and
neuro-symbolic intelligence.
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Intelligence in Robotic Computing: Agile Design Flows for Building Efficient and
Resilient Autonomous Machines
Zishen Wan,
Vijay Janapa Reddi,
Arijit Raychowdhury
ACM Student Research Competition (SRC), Grand Final, 2023
First Place, ACM/SIGBED Student Research Competition (SRC)
Paper /
Slide /
Media
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Media
This report summarizes our recent efforts in facilitating the development of scalable,
efficient, adaptive, and reliable autonomous machine computing, including automatic
domain-specific SoC exploration, software-hardware co-design, and
performance-efficiency-resilience co-optimization.
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Selected Publications       (*: Equal Contributions)
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Compositional AI Beyond LLMs: System Implications of Neuro-Symbolic-Probabilistic
Architectures
Zishen Wan,
Hanchen Yang,
Jiayi Qian,
Ritik Raj,
Joongun Park,
Chenyu Wang,
Arijit Raychowdhury,
Tushar Krishna
ACM Inter Conf on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems
(ASPLOS), 2026
Best Paper Award, DARPA SRC JUMP 2.0, 2025
Paper
Compositional AI integrates LLMs, symbolic, and probabilistic modules to enhance
interpretability, robustness, and trustworthiness for cognitive applications. This paper
presents a comprehensive system-level analysis of neuro-symbolic-probabilistic AI and reveals
its key performance characteristics.
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REASON: Accelerating Probabilistic Logical Reasoning for Scalable Neuro-Symbolic
Intelligence
Zishen Wan,
Che-Kai Liu,
Jiayi Qian,
Hanchen Yang,
Arijit Raychowdhury,
Tushar Krishna
International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture
(HPCA), 2026
Paper (To appear)
REASON is an algorithm-system-architecture framework that accelerates the “slow-thinking”
components of cognitive AI -- logical deduction, constraint solving, and probabilistic reasoning
-- through common representation, reconfigurable architecture, and tight GPU integration for
LLM+symbolic agentic workflows.
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A 40nm Programmable Heterogeneous SoC with 5.625MB/0.85MB RRAM/SRAM for Accelerating Neuro-Symbolic AI Models
Che-Kai Liu*,
Zishen Wan*,
Young-Seok Noh,
Mohamed Ibrahim,
Samuel D. Spetalnick,
Tushar Krishna,
Win-San Khwa,
Ashwin Sanjay Lele,
Yu-Der Chih,
Meng-Fan Chang,
Arijit Raychowdhury
IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), 2026
Paper (To appear)
We tapeout a fully programmable heterogeneous SoC that integrates RRAM/SRAM to efficiently accelerate a broad class of neuro-symbolic workloads.
The chip features integrated RRAM and SRAM neural-symbolic data paths, ultra-dense RRAM macros, scheduler-informed power management, and flexible programming support, demonstrating end-to-end silicon system for generalizable and efficient neuro-symbolic AI inference.
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ReCA: Integrated Acceleration for Real-Time and Efficient Cooperative Embodied
Autonomous Agents
Zishen Wan,
Yuhang Du,
Mohamed Ibrahim,
Jiayi Qian,
Jason Jabbour,
Yang (Katie) Zhao,
Tushar Krishna,
Arijit Raychowdhury,
Vijay Janapa Reddi
ACM Inter Conf on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems
(ASPLOS), 2025
Selected as Industry-Academia Partnership (IAP) Highlight
Paper /
Slide /
Slide
(long version) /
Poster /
Media
We propose ReCA, a characterization and system-architecture co-design framework dedicated to
cooperative embodied AI agent system acceleration, aiming to enhance both long-horizon
multi-objective planning task efficiency and system scalability.
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CogSys: Efficient and Scalable Neurosymbolic Cognition System via Algorithm-Hardware
Co-Design
Zishen Wan*,
Hanchen Yang*,
Ritik Raj*,
Che-Kai Liu,
Ananda Samajdar,
Arijit Raychowdhury,
Tushar Krishna
International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture
(HPCA), 2025
Best Paper Award, DARPA SRC JUMP 2.0, 2024
Paper /
Project Website /
Slide /
Slide (long version) /
Poster /
Tutorial /
Media
We propose CogSys, a characterization and co-design framework dedicated to neurosymbolic AI
system acceleration, aiming to win both reasoning efficiency and scalability.
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OctoCache: Caching Voxels for Accelerating 3D Occupancy Mapping in Autonomous Systems
Peiqing Chen,
Minghao Li,
Zishen Wan,
Yu-Shun Hsiao,
Minlan Yu,
Vijay Janapa Reddi,
Zaoxing (Alan) Liu
ACM Inter Conf on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems
(ASPLOS), 2025
Paper
We propose OctoCache, a software system designed to accelerate 3D occupancy mapping performance
in autonomous systems. OctoCache improves mapping system update speed through three mechanisms:
(1) optimization of cache memory access, (2) refinement of voxel ordering, and (3) workflow
parallelization.
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RTGS: Real-Time 3D Gaussian Splatting SLAM via Multi-Level Redundancy Reduction
Leshu Li,
Jiayin Qin,
Jie Peng,
Zishen Wan,
Huaizhi Qu,
Ye Han,
Pingqing Zheng,
Hongsen Zhang,
Yu (Kevin) Cao,
Tianlong Chen,
Yang (Katie) Zhao
ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO), 2025
Paper / Code
We propose RTGS, an algorithm-hardware co-designed framework that enables real-time 3D Gaussian
Splatting SLAM on edge devices by reducing multi-level computational redundancies. RTGS achieves
real-time rendering performance through adaptive pruning, dynamic downsampling, and a
GPU-integrated design.
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NSFlow: An End-to-End FPGA Framework with Scalable Dataflow Architecture for
Neuro-Symbolic AI
Hanchen Yang*,
Zishen Wan*,
Ritik Raj,
Joongun Park,
Ziwei Li,
Ananda Samajdar,
Arijit Raychowdhury,
Tushar Krishna
ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC), 2025
Paper /
Slide
We propose NSFlow, an FPGA framework for efficient, scalable, and adaptive across
neuro-symbolic systems. NSFlow features a design architecture generator that identifies workload
data dependencies and creates dataflow architectures, as well as reconfigurable array with
flexible compute units and re-organizable memory.
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ReaLM: Reliable and Efficient Large Language Model Inference with Statistical
Algorithm-Based Fault Tolerance
Tong Xie,
Jiawang Zhao,
Zishen Wan,
Zuodong Zhang,
Yuan Wang,
Runsheng Wang,
Ru Huang,
Meng Li
ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC), 2025
Paper / Code
We propose ReaLM, an algorithm/circuit co-design framework for resilient and efficient LLM
inference. ReaLM systematically characterizes the fault tolerance of LLMs, and introduces a
statistical algorithm-based fault tolerance algorithm and error detection circuit to enable
cost-effective fault detection and mitigation for LLMs.
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Generative AI in Embodied Systems: System-Level Analysis of Performance, Efficiency
and Scalability
Zishen Wan,
Jiayi Qian,
Yuhang Du,
Jason Jabbour,
Yilun Du,
Yang (Katie) Zhao,
Arijit Raychowdhury,
Tushar Krishna,
Vijay Janapa Reddi
IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software
(ISPASS), 2025
Paper / Slide
This paper systematically categorizes the workload characteristics of embodied agent systems
and presents a benchmark suite to evaluate their task performance and system efficiency,
suggests system optimization strategies to improve the performance, efficiency, and scalability
of future embodied system design.
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SCALE-Sim v3: A Modular Cycle-Accurate Systolic Accelerator Simulator for End-to-End
System Analysis
Ritik Raj,
Sarbartha Banerjee*,
Nikhil Srinivas*,
Zishen Wan*,
Jianming Tong*,
Ananda Samajdar,
Tushar Krishna
IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software
(ISPASS), 2025
Paper / Code
We present SCALE-Sim v3, a modular cycle-accurate simulator for systolic-array-based
architectures, featuring multi-core architecture with spatio-temporal partitioning, sparsity,
DRAM ramulator, precise data layout modeling, and energy and power estimation via Accelergy.
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Breaking the Memory Wall: Next-Generation AI Hardware
Kaushik Roy,
Adarsh Kosta,
Tanvi Sharma,
Shubham Negi,
Deepika Sharma,
Utkarsh Saxena,
Sourjya Roy,
Anand Raghunathan,
Zishen Wan,
Samuel Spetalnick,
Che-Kai Liu,
Arijit Raychowdhury
Frontiers in Science, 2025
Paper
/
Media
This perspective paper highlights the challenges and research opportunities posed by
ever-growing AI models and explores brain-inspired algorithms, novel memory technologies, and
algorithm–hardware co-design strategies for building efficient, sustainable, and edge-ready AI
systems.
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SLM-Mux: Orchestrating Small Language Models for Reasoning
Chenyu Wang*,
Zishen Wan*,
Hao Kang,
Emma
Chen,
Zhiqiang Xie,
Tushar Krishna,
Vijay Janapa Reddi,
Yilun Du
arXiv Preprint, 2025
Paper /
Project Website /
Code
We propose SLM-Mux, a new multi-model framework to coordinate multiple smaller language models
(SLMs) based on confidence and complementary strengths. SLM-MUX yields significant gains on
reasoning benchmarks by optimizing model subsets and inference scaling.
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QuArch: A Benchmark for Evaluating LLM Reasoning in Computer Architecture
Shvetank Prakash,
Andy Cheng,
Arya Tschand,
Mark Mazumder,
Varun Gohil,
Jeff Ma,
Jason Yik,
Zishen Wan,
Jessica Quaye,
Elisavet Lydia Alvanaki,
Avinash Kumar,
Chandrashis Mazumdar,
Tuhin Khare,
Alexander Ingare,
Ikechukwu Uchendu,
Radhika Ghosal,
Abhishek Tyagi,
Chenyu Wang,
Andrea Mattia
Garavagno,
Sarah Gu,
Alice Guo,
Grace Hur,
Luca Carloni,
Tushar Krishna,
Ankita Nayak,
Amir Yazdanbakhsh,
Vijay Janapa Reddi
arXiv Preprint, 2025
Paper /
Project Website
We propose QuArch, a benchmark of 2671 expert-validated Q&A pairs for evaluating LLMs’
reasoning and domain knowledge in computer architecture. While current LLMs grasp basic
architectural knowledge, they still struggle significantly on higher-order reasoning tasks..
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MulBERRY: Enabling Bit-Error Robustness for Energy-Efficient Multi-Agent Autonomous
Systems
Zishen Wan,
Nandhini
Chandramoorthy,
Karthik
Swaminathan,
Pin-Yu Chen,
Kshitij Bhardwaj,
Vijay Janapa Reddi,
Arijit Raychowdhury
ACM Inter Conf on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems
(ASPLOS), 2024
Best Poster Award, IBM IEEE AI Compute Symposium 2023
Paper /
Slide /
Poster /
Lightning Talk /
Media
We propose MulBERRY, a multi-agent robust learning framework to enhance bit error robustness
and energy efficiency for autonomous swarm systems.
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ORIANNA: An Accelerator Generation Framework for Optimization-Based Robotic
Applications
Yuhui Hao,
Yiming Gan,
Bo Yu,
Qiang Liu,
Yinhe Han,
Zishen Wan,
Shaoshan Liu
ACM Inter Conf on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems
(ASPLOS), 2024
Paper /
Lightning Talk /
Poster
We propose ORIANNA, a framework leverageing a common abstraction factor graph to generate
accelerators for diverse robotic applications (e.g., manipulators, vehicles, drones) containing
multiple optimization-based algorithms (e.g., localization, planning).
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The Vulnerability-Adaptive Protection Paradigm Toward Reliable Autonomous Machines
Zishen Wan*,
Yiming Gan*,
Bo Yu,
Shaoshan Liu,
Arijit Raychowdhury,
Yuhao Zhu
Communications of the ACM (CACM), 2024
Paper /
Slide /
ACM
News /
GT
News /
TechXplore
News /
MIT Technology Review News
We characterize the inherent resilience of different compute kernels in autonomous vehicles and
drones systems. We analyze the protection design landscape and propose the lightweight
Vulnerable-Adaptive Protection (VAP) paradigm for resilient autonomous machines.
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Towards Efficient Neuro-Symbolic AI: From Workload Characterization to Hardware
Architecture
Zishen Wan,
Che-Kai Liu,
Hanchen Yang,
Ritik Raj,
Chaojian Li,
Haoran You,
Yonggan Fu,
Cheng Wan,
Sixu Li,
Youbin Kim,
Ananda Samajdar,
Yingyan (Celine) Lin,
Mohamed Ibrahim,
Jan M. Rabaey,
Tushar Krishna,
Arijit Raychowdhury
IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Artificial Intelligence
(TCASAI), 2024
Best Paper Award, DARPA SRC JUMP 2.0, 2024
Top-1 Most Cited Paper in all TCASAI Papers
Paper /
Fortune
News /
CoCoSys
News
We analyze the neuro-symbolic workload chracteristics, and present a hardware acceleration case
study for vector-symbolic architecture to improve the performance, efficiency, and scalability
of neuro-symbolic computing.
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Towards Cognitive AI Systems: Workload and Characterization of Neuro-Symbolic AI
Zishen Wan,
Che-Kai Liu,
Hanchen Yang,
Ritik Raj,
Chaojian Li,
Haoran You,
Yonggan Fu,
Cheng Wan,
Ananda Samajdar,
Yingyan (Celine) Lin,
Tushar Krishna,
Arijit Raychowdhury
IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software
(ISPASS), 2024
Best Poster Award, DARPA SRC JUMP2.0 CoCoSys Center 2024
Paper / Slide / Media
We systematically categorize neuro-symbolic AI workloads, conduct workload characterizations
across hardware platforms, and identify cross-layer optimization opportunites for neuro-symbolic
systems.
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Thinking and Moving: An Efficient Computing Approach for Integrated Task and Motion
Planning in Cooperative Embodied AI Systems
Zishen Wan,
Yuhang Du,
Mohamed Ibrahim,
Yang (Katie) Zhao,
Tushar Krishna,
Arijit Raychowdhury
ACM/IEEE International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD), 2024
Paper
We present a cognitive-inspired modular framework for cooperative embodied AI systems and
identify the system inherent characteristics and optimization opportunities. Evaluated on
long-horizon multi-objective tasks, our cross-layer optimization achieves an average 3.93x
speedup in end-to-end task execution.
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Algorithm-Hardware Co-Design of Distribution-Aware Logarithmic-Posit Encodings for
Efficient DNN Inference
Akshat Ramachandran,
Zishen Wan,
Geonhwa Jeong,
John Gustafson,
Tushar Krishna
ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC), 2024
Paper /
Code
We present Logarithmic Posit, an adaptive and hardware-friendly datatype that dynamically
adapts to DNN weight/activation distributions for efficient inference. We develop Logarithmic
Posit quantization and Logarithmic Posit accelerator architecture via algorithm-hardware
co-design.
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RobotPerf: An Open-Source, Vendor-Agnostic, Benchmarking Suite for Evaluating Robotics
Computing System Performance
Victor Mayoral-Vilches,
Jason Jabbour,
Yu-Shun Hsiao,
Zishen Wan,
Alejandra
Martinez-Farina,
Martino Crespo-Alvarez,
Matthew Stewart,
Juan Manuel
Reina-Munoz,
Prateek Nagras,
Gaurav Vikhe,
Mohammad Bakhshalipour,
Martin Pinzger,
Stefan Rass,
Smruti Panigrahi,
Giulio
Corradi,
Niladri Roy,
Phillip B. Gibbons,
Sabrina M. Neuman,
Brian Plancher,
Vijay Janapa Reddi
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2024
Best Paper Award, IROS Robotics Benchmarking Workshop 2023
Paper /
Poster /
Code /
Project Page /
Media
We introduce RobotPerf, a benchmarking suite to evaluate robotics computing performance across
a diverse range of hardware platforms. As an open-source initiative, RobotPerf remains committed
to evolving with community input to advance the future of hardware-accelerated robotics.
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H3DFACT: Heterogeneous 3D Integrated CIM for Factorization with Holographic Perceptual
Representations
Zishen Wan*,
Che-Kai Liu*,
Mohamed Ibrahim,
Hanchen Yang,
Samuel Spetalnick,
Tushar Krishna,
Arijit Raychowdhury
Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference (DATE), 2024
Best Presentation Award, SRC TECHCON 2024
Paper /
Slide /
SRC News /
GT
News
We present H3DFACT, the first heterogeneous 3D integrated in-memory compute engine capable of
efficiently factorizing high-dimensional holographic representations towards next-generative
cognitive AI.
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Neuro-Symbolic Architecture Meets Large Language Models: A Memory-Centric Perspective
Mohamed Ibrahim,
Zishen Wan,
Haitong Li,
Priyadarshini Panda,
Tushar Krishna,
Pentti Kanerva,
Yiran Chen,
Arijit Raychowdhury
ACM/IEEE Embedded Systems Week (ESWEEK), 2024
Paper / Slide
We analyze the computational challenges of integrating LLMs and neuro-symbolic architecture,
and explore state-of-the-art solutions, focusing on the memory-centric computing principles at
both algorithmic and hardware levels.
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A 73.53TOPS/W 14.74TOPS Heterogeneous RRAM In-Memory and SRAM Near-Memory SoC for
Hybrid Frame and Event-Based Target Tracking
Muya Chang*,
Ashwin Lele*,
Samuel Spetalnick,
Brian Crafton,
Shota Konna,
Zishen Wan,
Ashwin Bhat,
Win-San Khwa,
Yu-der Chih,
Meng-Fan Chang,
Arijit Raychowdhury
IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), 2023
IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), 2023
Paper (ISSCC short version) /
Paper (JSSC long version)
We propose a fully-programmable heterogeneous ARM Cortex-based SoC with an in-memory low-power
RRAM-based CNN and a near-memory high-speed SRAM-based SNN in a hybrid architecture, for
high-speed target identification and tracking applications.
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BERRY: Bit Error Robustness for Energy-Efficient Reinforcement Learning-Based
Autonomous Systems
Zishen Wan,
Nandhini
Chandramoorthy,
Karthik
Swaminathan,
Pin-Yu Chen,
Vijay Janapa Reddi,
Arijit Raychowdhury
ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC), 2023
Paper /
Slide /
Poster
We propose BERRY, a robust learning framework to improve bit error robustness and energy
efficiency for RL autonomous systems. BERRY enables robust low-voltage operation on UAVs,
leading to high energy savings in both compute-level operation and system-level
quality-of-flight.
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MAVFI: An End-to-End Fault Analysis Framework with Anomaly Detection and Recovery for
Micro Aerial Vehicles
Yu-Shun Hsiao*,
Zishen Wan*,
Tianyu Jia,
Radhika Ghosal,
Abdulrahman Mahmoud,
Arijit Raychowdhury,
David Brooks,
Gu-Yeon Wei,
Vijay Janapa Reddi
Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference (DATE), 2023
IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems
(TCAD), 2023
Paper (DATE short version) /
Paper (TCAD long version) /
Slide /
Poster /
Code
We build a ROS-based end-to-end fault analysis framework to understand the resilience of Micro
Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) system, and propose two low overhead anomaly-based transient fault
detection and recovery schemes.
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Analyzing and Improving Resilience and Robustness of Autonomous Systems
Zishen Wan,
Karthik
Swaminathan,
Pin-Yu Chen,
Nandhini
Chandramoorthy,
Arijit Raychowdhury
IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD), 2022
Paper /
Media
/
Blog (in CN)
We explore the various origins of fault sources across the computing stack of autonomous
systems, and discuss the diverse fault impacts and fault mitigation techniques of different
scales of autonomous systems.
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Automatic Domain-Specific SoC Design for Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Srivatsan Krishnan,
Zishen Wan,
Kshitij Bhardwaj,
Paul Whatmough,
Aleksandra Faust,
Sabrina M. Neuman,
Gu-Yeon Wei,
David Brooks,
Vijay Janapa Reddi
IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO), 2022
IEEE Micro Top Picks 2023 Honorable Mention
Paper /
arXiv
We propose a machine learning-based design space exploration framework, Autopilot, that can
automate the full system cyber-physical co-design for aerial robots. AutoPilot consistently
outperforms general-purpose processors and specialized accelerators built for drones.
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Improving Compute In-Memory ECC Reliability with Successive Correction
Brian Crafton,
Zishen Wan,
Samuel Spetalnick,
Jong-Hyeok Yoon,
Wei Wu,
Carlos Tokunaga,
Vivek De,
Arijit Raychowdhury
ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC), 2022
Paper /
Video /
Media
We propose a new ECC scheme for hard and soft errors in foundry RRAM-based Compute-In-Memory
chip. We demonstrate single, double, and triple error correction offering up to 16,000×
reduction in bit error rate, while consuming only 29.1% area and 26.3% power overhead.
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Robotic Computing on FPGAs: Current Progress, Research Challenges, and Opportunities
Zishen Wan,
Ashwin Lele,
Bo Yu,
Shaoshan Liu,
Yu Wang,
Vijay Janapa Reddi,
Cong (Callie) Hao,
Arijit Raychowdhury
IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Circuits and Systems
(AICAS), 2022
Paper /
Slide /
Video
We present the cross-layer robotic computing stack, illustrate the current progress and key
design techniques. We summarize and highlight the challenges, research opportunities, and
roadmap for the next-generation FPGA-based robotic computing systems.
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An Energy-Efficient and Runtime-Reconfigurable FPGA-Based Accelerator for Robotic
Localization Systems
Qiang Liu*,
Zishen Wan*,
Bo Yu*,
Weizhuang Liu,
Shaoshan Liu,
Arijit Raychowdhury
IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), 2022
Paper /
Slide
We present an energy-efficient and runtime-reconfigurable FPGA-based accelerator for robotic
localization tasks. We exploit SLAM-specific data locality, sparsity, reuse, and parallelism,
and achieve >5x performance improvement over state-of-the-art.
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Roofline Model for UAVs: A Bottleneck Analysis Tool for Onboard Compute
Characterization of Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Srivatsan Krishnan,
Zishen Wan,
Kshitij Bhardwaj,
Ninad Jadhav,
Aleksandra Faust,
Vijay Janapa Reddi
IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software
(ISPASS), 2022
Paper /
Skyline Tool
We present a bottleneck analysis tool, Skyline, for designing compute systems for autonomous
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). The tool provides insights by exploiting the fundamental
relationships between various components in the autonomous UAV such as sensor, compute, body
dynamics.
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FRL-FI: Transient Fault Analysis for Federated Reinforcement Learning-Based Navigation
Systems
Zishen Wan,
Aqeel Anwar,
Abdulrahman Mahmoud,
Tianyu Jia,
Yu-Shun Hsiao,
Vijay Janapa Reddi,
Arijit Raychowdhury
Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference (DATE), 2022
Paper /
Slide
We characterize the hardware transient fault impact on federated reinforcement learning system,
a swarm intelligence paradigm in autonomous machines. We further propose application-aware
cost-effective fault detection and mitigation scheme to enable autonomy reliability.
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Circuit and System Technologies for Energy-Efficient Edge Robotics
Zishen Wan,
Ashwin Lele,
Arijit Raychowdhury
Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC), 2022
Paper /
Slide
We present a series of ultra-low-power accelerator and system designs on enabling the
intelligence in edge robotic platforms, with an emphasis on mixed-signal circuit, neuro-inspired
computing, benchmarking, software infrastructure, and algorithm-hardware co-design.
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Analyzing and Improving Fault Tolerance of Learning-Based Navigation System
Zishen Wan,
Aqeel Anwar,
Yu-Shun Hsiao,
Tianyu Jia,
Vijay Janapa Reddi,
Arijit Raychowdhury
ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC), 2021
Best Presentation Award as DAC Young Fellow
Paper /
Slide /
Video /
Media
We evaluate the resilience of learning-based navigation systems to transient and permanent
hardware faults. We further propose two efficient fault mitigation techniques for both RL
training and inference.
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A Survey of FPGA-Based Robotic Computing
Zishen Wan*,
Bo Yu*,
Thomas Yuang Li,
Jie Tang,
Yuhao Zhu,
Yu Wang,
Arijit Raychowdhury,
Shaoshan Liu
IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine (CAS-M), 2021
Paper
We provide an overview of recent work on FPGA-based robotic accelerators. An analysis of
software and hardware optimization techniques and main technical issues is presented, along with
some commercial and space applications.
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Algorithm-Hardware Co-Design of Adaptive Floating-Point Encodings for Resilient Deep
Learning Inference
Thierry Tambe,
En-Yu Yang,
Zishen Wan,
Yuntian Deng,
Vijay Janapa Reddi,
Alexander Rush,
David Brooks,
Gu-Yeon Wei
ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC), 2020
Best Paper Award
ACM SIGDA Research Highlights Nominee
Paper /
arXiv (long version) /
Media
We present an algorithm-hardware co-design centered around a novel floating-point inspired
number format, which can achieve higher inference accuracies
and lower per-operation energy compared to NVDLA-like PE.
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The Sky Is Not the Limit: A Visual Performance Model for Cyber-Physical Co-Design in
Autonomous Machines
Srivatsan Krishnan,
Zishen Wan,
Kshitij Bhardwaj,
Paul Whatmough,
Aleksandra Faust,
Gu-Yeon Wei,
David Brooks,
Vijay Janapa Reddi
IEEE Computer Architecture Letters (CAL), 2020
Best Paper Award
Invited presentation at International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture
(HPCA), 2021
Paper /
Tool Website
We introduce a roofline-like model to understand the role of computing in aerial autonomous
machines. The model provides insights by exploiting the fundamental relationships between
various components in an aerial robot, such as sensor framerate, compute performance, and body
dynamics.
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Honors and Awards
- 2025 1st Place, DAC PhD Forum
- 2025 Best Paper Award, DARPA SRC JUMP 2.0 Program
- 2025 Baidu Fellowship (10 awardees worldwide)
- 2025 Best Poster Award, DARPA SRC JUMP2.0 Center for Co-Design of Cognitive Systems
(CoCoSys) Annual Review
- 2025 WAIC Yunfan Rising Star Award Nominee
- 2024 Cyber-Physical Systems Rising Star
- 2024 Best Paper Award, DARPA SRC JUMP 2.0 Program
- 2024 Best Presentation Award, Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) TECHCON
- 2024 Best Poster Award, DARPA SRC JUMP2.0 Center for Co-Design of Cognitive Systems
(CoCoSys) Annual Review
- 2024 3rd Place, ACM/SIGMICRO Student Research Competition, International Symposium on
Microarchitecture (MICRO)
- 2024 Spotlight Research Scholar, DARPA SRC JUMP2.0 Center for Co-Design of Cognitive
Systems (CoCoSys)
- 2023 Machine Learning and Systems Rising Star
- 2023 IEEE Micro Top Picks, Honorable Mention ("in recognition of the most
significant research papers in computer architecture")
- 2023 Best Paper Award, Robotics Benchmarking Workshop, IEEE/RSJ International
Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
- 2023 Best Poster Award, IBM IEEE AI Compute Symposium
- 2023 Roger P. Webb Graduate Research Assistant Excellence Award, Georgia Tech
- 2022 1st Place, ACM/SIGBED Student Research Competition
- 2022 3rd Place, ACM/SIGDA Student Research Competition (declined)
- 2022 Qualcomm Fellowship
- 2022 Young Fellow, IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC)
- 2022 CRNCH PhD Fellowship, Center for Research into Novel Computing Hierarchies,
Georgia Tech
- 2021 ACM SIGDA Research Highlights Nominee
- 2021 Young Fellow, IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC)
- 2021 Best Presentation Award, Young Fellow Program at IEEE/ACM Design Automation
Conference (DAC)
- 2020 Best Paper Award, IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC)
- 2020 Best Paper Award, IEEE Computer Architecture Letters (CAL)
- Student Travel Award: DAC'25, HPCA'25, ISSCC'24, MICRO'24, MLSys'24, ISPASS'24,
ASPLOS'24, ISCA'23, MLSys'23, DAC'22, DAC'21
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Selected Talks
- "Tailored Computing: Cross-Layer System, Architecture, and Silicon Co-Design
for Embodied Autonomous Machines"
- 11/2025 Invited Talk, Tsinghua University NICS-EFC Lab (Host: Dr. Zhenhua Zhu), Online
- 10/2025 MICRO PhD Forum, IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO),
Seoul, Korea
- 06/2025 DAC PhD Forum, IEEE/ACM Chips to Systems Conference (DAC), San Francisco, CA
- 06/2025 Invited Talk, ISCA Workshop on Architecture Support for Embodied AI Systems,
Online
- 03/2025 CoCoSys (Center for the Co-Design of Cognitive Systems) Annual Summit, DARPA SRC
JUMP 2.0, Atlanta, GA
- 02/2025 Invited Talk, UIUC Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL), Champaign, IL
- 01/2025 Seminar Talk, University of Washington (Host: Prof. Ang Li), Seattle, WA
- 12/2024 Seminar Talk, Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
(Host: Prof. Yunji Chen), Online
- "System Implications and Opportunities for Compositional
Neuro-Symbolic-Probabilistic AI"
- 09/2025 Seminar Talk, Georgia Tech (Host: Prof. Alexey Tumanov), Atlanta, GA
- "Demystifying NeuroSymbolic AI via Workload Characterization and
Software-Hardware Co-Design"
- 07/2025 Seminar Talk, Purdue University (Host: Prof. Anand Raghunathan, Prof. Kaushik
Roy), West Lafayette, IN
- 07/2025 Seminar Talk, University of Notre Dame (Host: Prof. Ningyuan Cao), South Bend,
IN
- 04/2025 Google (Host: Dr. Suvinay Subramanian), Online
- 03/2025 CoCoSys (Center for the Co-Design of Cognitive Systems) Annual Summit, DARPA SRC
JUMP 2.0, Atlanta, GA
- 01/2025 Guest Lecture, Georgia Tech ECE8893 Parallel Programming for FPGAs (Host: Prof.
Callie Hao), Atlanta, GA
- 01/2025 Georgia Tech Computer Architecture Research Seminar (Arch-Whisky), Atlanta, GA
- 11/2024 ACM Student Research Competition, International Symposium on Microarchitecture
(MICRO), Austin, TX
- 08/2024 Invited Talk, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (Host: Prof. Katie Zhao),
Minneapolis, MN
- 05/2024 Young Professional Symposium, Conference on Machine Learning and Systems (MLSys),
Santa Clara, CA
- 05/2024 International Workshop on Neuro-symbolic Systems (NeuS), UC Berkeley, Berkeley,
CA
- 03/2024 CoCoSys (Center for the Co-Design of Cognitive Systems) Annual Summit, DARPA SRC
JUMP 2.0, Atlanta, GA
- 09/2023 Guest Lecture, EE6900 Neuromorphic Computing (Host: Prof. Yan Fang), Atlanta,
GA
- 05/2023 Georgia Tech 3D Systems Packaging Research Center Spring Meeting, Atlanta, GA
- 05/2023 CoCoSys (Center for the Co-Design of Cognitive Systems) Annual Summit, DARPA SRC
JUMP 2.0, Atlanta, GA
- "System-Architecture-Technology Cross-Layer Design for Autonomous and Embodied
Intelligence"
- 11/2024 Invited Talk, Harvard University Nano-Design Research Group (Host: Prof. Gage
Hills), Cambridge, MA
- 08/2024 Invited Talk, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Host: Dr. Kshitij Bhardwaj),
Livermore, CA
- "Intelligence in Robotic Computing: Exploring Agile Design Flows for Efficient
and Resilient Autonomous Systems"
- 11/2024 Invited Talk, University of Central Florida Computer Architecture Seminar (Host:
Prof. Di Wu), Orlando, FL
- 11/2024 Invited Talk, MICRO Workshop on Robotics Acceleration with Computing Hardware,
Austin, TX
- 09/2024 ESWEEK (Embedded Systems Week) PhD Forum, Raleigh, NC
- 05/2024 Cyber-Physical System Rising Star Workshop, University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, VA
- 05/2024 CoCoSys (Center for the Co-Design of Cognitive Systems) Liaison Meeting, DARPA SRC
JUMP 2.0, Atlanta, GA
- 02/2024 CRIDC (Career, Research, and Innovation Development Conference), Atlanta, GA
- 02/2024 Georgia Tech Computer Architecture Research Seminar (Arch-Whisky), Atlanta, GA
- 11/2023 6th IBM AI Compute Symposium, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights,
NY
- 08/2023 ML and Systems Rising Stars Workshop, Google, Mountain View, CA
- 05/2023 Georgia Tech Chips Day, Atlanta, GA
- 03/2023 Georgia Tech EIC Lab (Host: Prof. Celine Lin), Atlanta, GA
- 02/2023 CRNCH (Center for Research into Novel Computing Hierarchies) Annual Summit,
Atlanta, GA
- 11/2022 ACM Student Research Competition at ICCAD, San Diego, CA
- "Efficient Algorithm-Hardware Co-Design for Autonomous Machine
Computing"
- 09/2023 Georgia Tech Computer Architecture Research Seminar (Arch-Whisky ), Atlanta, GA
- 02/2023 CRIDC (Career, Research, and Innovation Development Conference), Atlanta, GA
- 10/2022 5th IBM AI Compute Symposium, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights,
NY
- 10/2022 CBRIC (Research Center for Brain-Inspired Computing) Annual Summit, DARPA JUMP
SRC, Purdue University, IN
- 03/2022 Guest Lecture, Georgia Tech ECE8893 Parallel Programming for FPGAs (Host: Prof.
Callie Hao), Atlanta, GA
- 02/2022 CRNCH (Center for Research into Novel Computing Hierarchies) Annual Summit, Online
- "Enabling Reliable and Safe Autonomous Systems"
- 03/2024 CoCoSys (Center for the Co-Design of Cognitive Systems) Annual Summit, DARPA SRC
JUMP 2.0, Atlanta, GA
- 02/2024 CRNCH (Center for Research into Novel Computing Hierarchies) Annual Summit,
Atlanta, GA
- 05/2023 CoCoSys (Center for the Co-Design of Cognitive Systems) Annual Summit, DARPA SRC
JUMP 2.0, Atlanta, GA
- 11/2022 ACM Student Research Competition at ESWEEK, Online
- 06/2022 COMPSAC plenary panel 'Reliability of Autonomous Machines', Online
- 10/2021 CBRIC (Center for Brain-Inspired Computing) Annual Summit, DARPA JUMP SRC,
Online
- 08/2021 CBRIC (Center for Brain-Inspired Computing) Industry Talk, DARPA JUMP SRC,
Online
- 07/2020 Harvard Architecture, Circuits and Compilers Lab, Online
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Teaching
- Course Staff / Teaching Assistant:
- CS249r Architecture 2.0:
Agentic AI for Computing Systems Design, Harvard University, Fall 2025
- Guest Lecturer:
- ECE8893 Parallel Programming for FPGAs, Georgia Tech, Spring 2025, "SW-HW Co-Design
for Neuro-Symbolic AI"
- ECE8803 SW-HW Co-Design for ML Systems, Georgia Tech, Spring 2025, "Opportunities and
Challenges for In-/Near-memory Computing"
- ECE8893 Parallel Programming for FPGAs, Georgia Tech, Spring 2023, "FPGA-based Robotic
Computing"
- ECE8893 Parallel Programming for FPGAs, Georgia Tech, Spring 2022, "FPGA-based Robotic
Computing"
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Academic Service
- Conference Reviewer: DAC'26, MLSys'26, MLSys'25, ICRA'25,
Arch4EAI@ISCA'25, SCOPE@ICLR'25, CAV@ASPLOS'24, DAC'24, DAC'23, ESWEEK'23,
IJCAI'23, NPC'22.
- Journal Reviewer: IEEE JSSC, IEEE TCAD, IEEE TCAS-I, IEEE
TBioCAS, IEEE JETCAS, IEEE Micro, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, IEEE CAL, IEEE
TIM, ACM JATS, ACM TCPS.
- Artifact Evaluation Committee: HPCA'26, HPCA'25, ISCA'24,
MICRO'23, ISCA'23, ASPLOS'23, MLSys'23, MICRO'22, ASPLOS'22, IISWC'22.
- Workshop & Special Session Oragnizer: ASPLOS'26, ICCAD'24,
ESWEEK'24.
- Workshop Program Committee: ArchEAI workshop (ISCA 2025),
SCOPE workshop (ICLR 2025), Lock-LLM workshop (NeurIPS 2025), CAV workshop (ASPLOS
2024).
- Working Group: Co-found MLCommons (MLPerf) Resilience and
Robustness Research Working Group.
- Panelist: ML & Systems Rising Star Workshop'25, COMPSAC'22.
- Outreach activity: ISSCC'24 News and Media Team, Steering
Committee of Computer Architecture Student Association (CASA), Steering Committee
of IEEE Entrepreneurship China, IISWC'19 Volunteer.
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Media Coverage
- Georgia Tech
News: Conference Spotlights Microarchitecture Research and Innovation (1/2026)
- Synced (机器之心)
News: Collaborative Acceleration: Multi-Robot Cooperation No Longer
“Half a Beat Slow”! (10/2025)
- DARPA
SRC News: Wan Wins First Place at DAC 2025 Ph.D. Forum (08/2025)
- Georgia
Tech News: Wan Wins First Place at Premier Computing Ph.D. Forum
(07/2025)
- Georgia
Tech News: CoCoSys Develops Groundbreaking Neuro-Symbolic AI Chip
(05/2025)
- DARPA
SRC News: SRC Highlights: CoCoSys Featured in Fortune (01/2025)
- MIT Technology
Review News: New Adaptive Protection Paradigm to Improve the Reliability
of Robot Computing Systems (01/2025)
- Fortune
News: Generative AI can't shake its reliability problem, some say
'neurosymbolic AI' is the answer (12/2024)
- CoCoSys
News: Zishen Wan: Research Scholar Spotlight from DARPA SRC JUMP2.0
Program (12/2024)
- TechXplore
News: Balancing cost and reliability in autonomous machine design
(10/2024)
- Georgia
Tech News: ECE Students Take Home Top Honors at TECHCON 2024 (10/2024)
- ACM
News: Hallucination vs Creativity, Public Digital Currencies, and
Reliable Autonomous Machines (09/2024)
- TechSpot
News: Number Representations in Computer Hardware: Fundamentals Matter
(06/2024)
- Georgia
Tech News: ECE Benchmarking Making Major Advances in Machine Learning
(04/2024)
- Georgia
Tech News: Wan Recognized for Energy-Saving Research on Autonomous
Systems (01/2024)
- Georgia
Tech News: The Year in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
(12/2023)
- Semiconductor
Engineering News: Scalable And Compact Multi-Bit CAM Designs Using
FeFETs (10/2023)
- Georgia
Tech News: Wan Selected as Machine Learning and Systems Rising Star
(09/2023)
- RobotReport
News: RobotPerf Benchmarks compare robotics computing performance
(09/2023)
- Georgia
Tech News: Celebrating ISCA's 50th: Georgia Tech's Contributions,
Impact, and Reflections on 50 Years of Computer Architecture
Innovation (07/2023)
- Georgia
Tech News: Wan Wins Computing Machinery Student Research Competition
(12/2022)
- Google
AI Blog: Quantization for Fast and Environmentally Sustainable
Reinforcement Learning (09/2022)
- MarkTechPost
News: A Novel Reinforcement Learning Training Paradigm to Speed Up
Actor-Learner Distributed RL Training (09/2022)
- Georgia
Tech News: Wan Selected for IEEE/ACM DAC Honors (01/2022)
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Misc
- Sports: I like table tennis, soccer, swimming, hiking,
and jogging. I'm a member of Georgia Tech Table Tennis Association.
- Arts: I like calligraphy and have practiced more than
10 years. My undergrad Calculus class notes were awarded 'The Most
Beautiful Class Note' and permanently collected and displayed by
Harbin Institute of Technology university museum.
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