Stanford VLSI Group Homepage

Faculty Advisor

Mark Horowitz received his BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1978, and his PhD from Stanford in 1984. Since 1984 he has been a professor at Stanford working in the area of digital integrated circuit design. While at Stanford he has led a number of processor designs including MIPS-X, one of the first processors to include an on-chip instruction cache, Torch, a statically-scheduled, superscalar processor and Flash, a flexible DSM machine. He has also worked in a number of other chip design areas including high-speed memory design, high-bandwidth interfaces, and fast floating point. In 1990 he took leave from Stanford to help start Rambus Inc, a company designing high-bandwidth memory interface technology.

Consulting Professors

Jaeha Kim (S'94-M'03) received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in 1997, and received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, in 1999 and 2003, respectively. Prior to joining Stanford, he was with True Circuits, Inc. (2001~2003), Seoul National University in Korea (2003~2006), and Rambus, Inc (2006~2009). His research interests include high-speed/low-power circuit design and verification methodologies for analog and mixed-signal circuits.

Staff

Stephen Richardson got his PhD from Stanford a long time ago, and now he's back. In the meantime, Dr. Richardson has worked at Sun Microsystems and HP research labs, where he eventually headed up a large team of hardware-oriented computer architects. Dr. Richardson was a cofounder of MicroMagic (www.micromagic.com), a processor tool and design consulting firm. Dr. Richardson has authored several papers and patents, including a patent covering the concept of multiplication by zero and one (US patent 5262973). If you multiply a number by zero and get zero as a result, you owe me a dime.

Ofer is a PhD student at Stanford University’s EE department. His fields of research, under the advisory of Prof. Mark Horowitz, include Parallel Computer Architectures, ASIC design and verification, and High Performance Computing. He holds a Masters in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Tel-Aviv University. Prior to coming to Stanford, Ofer was working at IBM Labs in Israel, on ASIC design and verification, for high performance computing. Ofer's experience also includes 5 years of active service in an elite Israeli Navy unit.

Current Students

Zain Asgar received his undergraduate degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota with Summa Cum Laude and High Distinction. He is currently pursuing his PhD under Prof. Mark Horowitz at Stanford University in the area of multiprocessors. He has worked at PMC-Sierra working on ASIC design. He is currently working at NVIDIA Corporation on the design of next generation graphics processors.

Limor Bursztyn is interested in both Electrical Engineering (with an emphasis on signal processing) and Neuroscience. She is currently involved in the Massively Parallel Brain Imaging project, led by Prof. Mark Schnitzer. In this project, a system that will enable performing two-photon imaging in 100 fruit flies (Drosophila) simultaneously is being designed. With the help of consulting Prof. Don Stark, Limor is working on the data acquisition, control and interface parts of the system. Limor has also been working with Prof. Thomas Clandinin (Neurobiology), on developing statistical signal processing techniques for using the acquired data to infer how the fly brain analyzes visual stimuli and uses the information to modulate behavior. Limor's PhD studies are funded by a Fulbright Science and Technology fellowship. Prior to starting her PhD in EE at Stanford, she received a BSc and MSc in Biomedical Engineering from Tel-Aviv University.

Andrew Danowitz received his B.S. in General Engineering from Harvey Mudd College in May 2008. He has been working with Mark Horowitz as a Ph.D. student since 2009. Andrew's research focuses on reconfigurable hardware design in the Chip Generator project.

Sameh Galal: received BS in electronics engineering and computer science from the American university in Cairo, MS in electrical engineering from Stanford University where he is currently pursuing PhD. His research interests include: VLSI, low power design, floating point units and computer architecture.

Metha received his BS and MEng in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University in 2001 and 2002 respectively. He started his PhD program at Stanford in Fall 2002 before working at Rambus between 2004-2008 designing circuits for high speed links and working on circuit design methodologies. He is now working with Prof. Horowitz under the RAD initiative focusing on circuit optimization area.

Kyle is a PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. His research interests include energy-efficient VLSI design, parallel computing, convex optimization, machine learning, and algorithmic finance. Kyle has a BS in engineering and a BA in economics from Harvey Mudd College, and an MS in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

Frances is interested in applying techniques from circuit design and VLSI to the design of biomedical systems. She is currently focusing on molecular imaging, working on the development of a breast cancer imaging PET (positron emission tomography) system. This project is done in collaboration with the Molecular Imaging Instrumentation Lab at Stanford. She is also designing a mixed-signal integrated circuit for PET applications, utilizing some of the design methodologies under the Rethinking Analog Design initiative. She completed her BASc in EE at the University of Toronto in 2005 and her MS in EE at Stanford in 2007, and is now an EE PhD candidate at Stanford.

Sabrina is a PhD candidate in the Stanford VLSI Group. She received her B.A.Sc in Engineering Science (EE option) from the University of Toronto in 2008 and her MSEE from Stanford University in 2009. Prior to coming to Stanford, Sabrina has had research experience in areas of multimedia communication, quantum mechanics and DCO design. In addition, she has worked at Gennum Corporation's Snowbush IP Division on ASIC verification and testing. In the summer of 2010, she interned at TI's Kilby Research Lab designing 10GHz baseband circuits for a THz communication system. Her research interests include analog/mixed-signal circuit design, optoelectronics and CMOS integration, high speed links and design methodologies. She is currently working on a high performace A/D converter design using novel design methodologies.

I received B.S. and M.S. degrees in electronic engineering from Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea, in 1997 and 2002, respectively. I am currently working toward the Ph. D. degree in electrical engineering at Stanford University. From 2003 to 2007, I had been working on analog IP developement for LG electronics.

Krishna Malladi graduated from IIT Kanpur, India in 2009 with a Dual Degree (Bachelors and Masters) in Electrical Engineering with Academic-proficiency medal. Since 2009-fall, he has been a PhD student at Stanford University under the guidance of Prof. Mark Horowitz and is supported by Benchmark Capital Stanford Graduate Fellowship. His research focuses on developing Energy-efficient server architectures and memories for datacenters. He has been associated with Google and Qualcomm as an intern in 2010 and 2008 respectively. Krishna enjoys traveling, playing piano and cricket.

Kahye Song is a Ph.D. student at Electrical Engineering department at Stanford University. She received her BS in Electrical Engineering from Seoul National University in 2003 and MS in Electrical Engineering from Royal Institute of Technology in 2003 and also from Stanford University in 2006. She is currently working on enhancing image quality and developing image analysis tools for electron tomography. She worked for AOL advertising as a principal research engineer developing online advertising engine prior to her Ph.D. studies.

Pete is a Ph.D. student at Stanford University working in the field of circuit design, under the direction of professor Mark Horowitz. He aspires to develop innovative design tools for digital circuits. He is interested in closing the gap between a design implemented by HDL synthesis and a design optimized by exhaustive customization. Hailing from Tulsa, OK, Pete attended the U.S. Naval Academy from 1996 to 2000. After being commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Navy, he attended Stanford to obtain an MSEE (2002). Following this, he served on board a nuclear powered submarine, the USS Los Angeles (SSN-688) stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Subsequent to the tour at sea, Pete taught a basic network analysis class and an introduction to communications systems class at the U.S. Naval Academy, from 2006 to 2008. Pete is married and lives with his wife, Siejen, in Menlo Park, CA. His hobbies include surfing, golf, and reading.

Megan Wachs has been a MS/PhD student at Stanford since 2005. Her research interests include VLSI design and verification, and parallel architectures. In 2006 she started helping with the verification of the Stanford Smart Memories CMP, and is now working on the Chip Generator Project. She has worked as an intern at Cryptography Research, Inc, in San Francisco, as well as at Celestica, Shanghai. She received her BS from Brown University in 2005 in Electrical Engineering.

Gordon received his BS in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005, and his MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2007. He is currently a PhD candidate under Prof. Mark Horowitz at Stanford University. He has received the James F. and Mary Lynn Gibbons Fellowship, the Stanford Graduate Fellowship, and the Pan Wen Yuan Scholarship. He ranked 2nd in Stanford PhD Qualifying Exam. His research interest is in CMOS image sensor, digital imaging, and solid-state devices.

Alumni