His current broader research interests are in computer architecture, computing systems, hardware security, and bioinformatics. He is especially interested in interactions across domains and between applications, system software, compilers, and microarchitecture, with a major current focus on memory and storage systems, bioinformatics, and biologically-inspired computation paradigms. A variety of techniques he and his group discovered and invented over the years (e.g., the RowHammer phenomenon in DRAM memory and its various solutions, new insights on DRAM and NAND flash memory errors, runahead execution, QoS-aware memory controllers, intelligent prefetcher designs, non-volatile memory and hybrid memory system designs, new memory system architectures, new GPU thread schedulers, and various flash memory signal processing and lifetime management mechanisms) have influenced industry and have been employed in commercial microprocessors and memory/storage systems, including systems designed by Apple, Intel, IBM, Nvidia, Samsung, Sun Microsystems.
He obtained his PhD and MS in ECE from the University of Texas at Austin (in 2006) and BS degrees in Computer Engineering and Psychology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His PhD dissertation was on efficient runahead execution processors. His industrial experience spans starting the Computer Architecture Group at Microsoft Research (2006-2009), and various product and research positions at Intel Corporation, Advanced Micro Devices, VMware and Google over the course of the past 20 years, along with numerous consulting engagements.
He was named an ACM Fellow for “contributions to computer architecture research, especially in memory systems” and an IEEE Fellow for “contributions to computer architecture research and practice.” In 2018, he was elected as a member of the Academy of Europe (Academia Europaea) due to his “outstanding achievements as a researcher.”
He is honored and humbled to have received several honors for his research, teaching and educational contributions. These include the 2020 IEEE Computer Society Edward J. McCluskey Technical Achievement Award, "for innovative and impactful contributions to computer memory systems" the 2019 ACM SIGARCH Maurice Wilkes Award, "for innovative contributions in efficient and secure DRAM systems", the inaugural 2011 IEEE Computer Society TCCA Young Computer Architect Award, the inaugural 2012 Intel Early Career Faculty Honor Program Award, 2012 Carnegie Mellon College of Engineering George Tallman Ladd Research Award, the Dr. William D. and Nancy W. Strecker Early Career Professorship at Carnegie Mellon University in 2013, the US National Science Foundation's CAREER Award in 2010, the Microsoft Gold Star Award in 2008, and the University of Texas George H. Mitchell Award for Excellence in Graduate Research in 2005.
A healthy number of his works are recognized with best paper and "Top Pick" paper awards at various computer systems, architecture, and hardware security venues. These include many of his papers that were selected as IEEE Micro’s Top Picks in Computer Architecture over the years, his ISCA 2014 RowHammer paper selected as a Top Pick in IEEE TCAD’s 2019 Top Picks in Hardware and Embedded Security, ASPLOS 2010 Best Paper Award, VTS 2010 Best Paper Award, ICCD 2012 Best Paper Award, RTAS 2014 Best Paper Award, DFRWS-EU 2017 Best Paper Award, DSN 2019 Best Paper Award, and various Best Presentation Awards and Best Paper Session Presentations by his students. He has co-authored a healthy number of top conference papers, journal articles, and book chapters, many of which have been widely recognized in both academia and industry.
He has received faculty partnership awards from various companies (including Alibaba, AMD, Facebook, Google, HP, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Samsung, VMware).
He equally enjoys teaching and research. His computer architecture, memory systems, and digital design course lectures and materials, at Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD levels, are freely available online (videos on YouTube). His research group makes a wide variety of software and hardware artifacts freely available online.
For more information, please refer to his publications, Google Scholar profile, talks, honors and awards, lectures, recent research news (outdated), CV (outdated), and his research group, SAFARI.