Qi Zhu's Home Page

Qi Zhu

Assistant Professor
Department of Electrical Engineering
University of California, Riverside

322 Engineering Building II

951-827-7701
qzhu at ee dot ucr dot edu

Research

Areas of Interests: Embedded Systems, Cyber-Physical Systems, Computer-Aided Design for Circuits.

My recent projects have been focusing on system level optimization and modeling methodologies for embedded systems and cyber-physical systems:

Extensibility optimization for distributed embedded systems [J2, C7]
This work optimizes an extensibility metric that measures how much the execution times of software tasks can be increased without violating design constraints. Optimizing extensibility allows adding future functionality or upgrading existing functionality without major redesign cycle, which is imperative for large-volume and long lifetime systems such as vehicles, airplanes and buildings. This work was in collaboration with United Technologies.
Task allocation and priority assignment for distributed embedded systems [J3, C6]
This work minimizes the end-to-end latencies along timing-critical paths in distributed embedded systems, by exploring major design variables such as the allocation and priority assignment of tasks and signals. End-to-end latencies are crucial for system performance and safety. This work was in collaboration with General Motors.
Period optimization for distributed embedded systems [C5]
This work also targets the reduction of end-to-end latencies in distributed embedded systems, through exploring the activation periods of tasks and messages. It was in collaboration with General Motors.
Design flow for building automation and control systems [C8]
To reduce energy consumption, modern green buildings employ complex automation systems that closely monitor and control the building environment (e.g. HVAC and lighting control). We proposed a design flow to optimally and correctly implement the control mechanisms on a distributed building platform, with consideration of physical elements such as building layout, sensor/actuator locations and environment dynamics. This work was in collaboration with United Technologies.
Metropolis and Metro II: Design frameworks for heterogeneous embedded systems [C4]
I was part of the Metropolis project conducted at UC Berkeley and Gigascale Systems Research Center, which provides a system level framework for modeling heterogeneous systems and performing various design activities such as simulation, verification and synthesis.

In past, I also worked on CAD for circuits, including projects on logic synthesis and physical design:

SAT sweeping with local observability don't cares [C3]
Boolean reasoning is an essential part of electronic design automation. AND-INVERTER Graphs (AIGs) are often used to represent Boolean functions but have a high degree of structural redundancy. We proposed a significant extension of the SAT-sweeping algorithm that exploits local observability don't-cares (ODCs) to simplify AIGs. This work was in collaboration with Cadence.
Non-rectilinear global routing [J1, C1]
We proposed global routing algorithms for octilinear interconnect architecture, and extended them to general non-rectilinear interconnect.

I am also very interested in SOC design methodologies and tools. While in Berkeley, I worked with Intel on a project of exploring different implementations of JPEG encoder on Intel MXP5800 media processor ([C2]). After joining the Strategic CAD Labs in Intel, I have been focusing on system level modeling and exploration methodologies and tools for Intel SOCs.

Publications

Complete list of publications is available in my CV. Here are some selected papers.

[J3] Optimization of Task Allocation and Priority Assignment in Hard Real-Time Distributed Systems
Qi Zhu, Haibo Zeng, Wei Zheng, Marco Di Natale and Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli
accepted by the ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS), Special Issue on the Synthesis of Cyber-Physical Systems.
[J2] Optimizing the Software Architecture for Extensibility in Hard Real-Time Distributed Systems
Qi Zhu, Yang Yang, Marco Di Natale, Eelco Scholte and Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli
IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (TII), Vol. 6, No. 4, November 2010.
[J1] Spanning Graph-Based Nonrectilinear Steiner Tree Algorithms
Qi Zhu, Hai Zhou, Tong Jing, Xianlong Hong and Yang Yang
IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems (TCAD), Vol. 24, No. 7, July 2005.
[C8] A Design Flow for Building Automation and Control Systems
Yang Yang, Alessandro Pinto, Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli and Qi Zhu
31st IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS'10), San Diego, CA, December 2010.
[C7] Optimizing Extensibility in Hard Real-time Distributed Systems
Qi Zhu, Yang Yang, Eelco Scholte, Marco Di Natale and Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli
15th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS'09), San Francisco, CA, April 2009.
[C6] Definition of Task Allocation and Priority Assignment in Hard Real-Time Distributed Systems
Wei Zheng, Qi Zhu, Marco Di Natale and Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli
28th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS'07), Tucson, Arizona, December 2007.
[C5] Period Optimization for Hard Real-time Distributed Automotive Systems
Abhijit Davare, Qi Zhu, Marco Di Natale, Claudio Pinello, Sri Kanajan and Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli
44th IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC'07), San Diego, California, June 2007. (Best Paper Award)
[C4] A Next-Generation Design Framework for Platform-Based Design
Abhijit Davare, Douglas Densmore, Trevor Meyerowitz, Alessandro Pinto, Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, Guang Yang, Haibo Zeng and Qi Zhu
Design and Verification Conference (DVCon'07), San Jose, CA, February 2007.
[C3] SAT Sweeping with Local Observability Don't-Cares
Qi Zhu, Nathan Kitchen, Andreas Kuehlmann and Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli
43rd IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC'06), San Francisco, California, July 2006. (Best Paper Award)
[C2] JPEG Encoding on the Intel MXP5800: A Platform-Based Design Case Study
Abhijit Davare, Qi Zhu, John Moondanos and Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli
3rd IEEE Workshop on Embedded Systems for Real-Time Multimedia (ESTIMedia'05), New York Metro Area, September 2005.
[C1] Efficient Octilinear Steiner Tree Construction Based on Spanning Graphs
Qi Zhu, Hai Zhou, Tong Jing, Xianlong Hong and Yang Yang
9th IEEE/ACM Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC'04), Yokohama, Japan, January 2004.

Teaching

Fall 2011: Logic Design (EE/CS 120A)

Prospective students

I am looking for motivated students to work with me in the areas of distributed embedded systems, energy-efficient cyber-physical systems, and SOC software/hardware co-design. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you are interested.

Last modified: 2011/10/4