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. Solving interesting problems is my biggest motivation.

I’m joining Etched in July 2026 as a chip simulation software engineer.

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Academia Work

I graduated from UC Davis with a Master’s degree in Computer Science in June 2026 and a BS in Computer Science and Engineering in June 2023. During my final year of undergraduate studies and throughout my Master’s, I was advised by Professor Jason Lowe-Power on high-performance computing system optimization, simulation, and evaluation.

I also completed a year-long visit at Cornell University, ending in June 2026, working on robotic compute–software co-simulation infrastructure and co-design, advised by Professor Christopher Batten.

Besides leading my own projects, I also collaborated closely with professors and researchers from top-tier universities and Oak Ridge National Laboratory on projects related to simulation methodology and performance evaluation for various emerging workloads.

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)
    Zhantong Qiu, Mahyar Samani, Jason Lowe-Power
    LLVM IR-based sampling framework

  2. Accelerating the Simulation of Parallel Workloads (ACM TACO 2025)
    Alen Sabu, Zhantong Qiu, Harish Patil, Changxi Liu, Wim Heirman, Jason Lowe-Power, Trevor E. Carlson
    LoopPoint methodology full-system extension

Talks

  • ISCA 2026 - Technique talk on introducing Arm-M class modeling support in gem5 (gem5 Workshop, Raleigh, NC)
  • 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.