Zhantong Qiu

Zhantong Qiu

Computer systems researcher focusing on performance evaluation, simulation, and hardware-software co-design

Zhantong Qiu - Computer Systems Researcher

I am a computer architecture researcher passionate about building frameworks for efficient computer system performance evaluation. My research focuses on performance evaluation, simulation methodology, and hardware-software co-design for emerging applications.

I will graduate in Spring 2026 and am currently looking for a full-time position in industry.

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Current Work

I’m currently pursuing my Master’s degree in Computer Science at UC Davis (expected graduation Spring 2026), focusing on high-performance computing system optimization and evaluation, advised by Professor Jason Lowe-Power. I’m also working as a visiting student at Cornell University on robotic hardware-software co-design and embedded systems simulation, advised by Professor Christopher Batten.

Research Interests

I tackle challenging problems in constrained systems—from tiny robots to datacenters—by developing solutions that span multiple layers of the computer system stack. My main research contributions include:

  • Nugget: An LLVM IR-based sampling framework that enables portable, fast, and accurate analysis of long-running workloads across different ISAs and microarchitectures
  • gem5 Contributions: Active contributor to the gem5 simulator with 50+ commits on full-system sampling and simulation features
  • Closed-loop robotic simulation with gem5: A framework that integrates computer architecture simulation with robotic simulation to reduce the sim-to-real gap with high scalability.

Publications

  1. Nugget: Portable Program Snippets (HPCA 2026, accepted)
    Zhantong Qiu, Mahyar Samani, Jason Lowe-Power
    LLVM IR-based sampling framework

  2. Accelerating the Simulation of Parallel Workloads (ACM TACO, under review)
    Alen Sabu, Zhantong Qiu, Harish Patil, Changxi Liu, Wim Heirman, Jason Lowe-Power, Trevor E. Carlson
    LoopPoint methodology full-system extension

Talks

  • HPCA 2026 - Accepted paper talk on Nugget: Portable Program Snippets (Main Conference, Sydney, Australia)
  • CGO 2026 - Technique talk on Nugget with LLVM infrastructure (LLVM-CGO-2026 Workshop, Sydney, Australia)
  • gem5 Bootcamp 2024 - A week long hands-on training on gem5 simulator (UC Davis, CA)
  • HPCA 2023 - LoopPoint Tools: Sampled Simulation of Complex Multi-threaded Workloads using Sniper and gem5 (LoopPoint Tutorial, Montreal, CA)
  • ISCA 2023 - Technique talk on full-system sampling support in gem5 (gem5 Workshop, Orlando, FL)

See all talks for more details.