Reza Azimi - Computer Engineering Research Group - University of ...

Education
Reza Azimi
email: azimi@eecg.toronto.edu
http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~azimi
Ph.D., Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
2002-2007
Thesis Title: System Software Utilization of Hardware Performance Monitoring Information
Supervisor: Michael Stumm
M.A.Sc., Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
2000-2002
Thesis: Reducing Network Interface Requirements by Dynamic Handle Lookup
Supervisor: Angelos Bilas
M.Sc., Department of Computer Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
1995-1997
Thesis: Design and Partial Implementation of Memory Management for an Object Oriented Operating
System
Supervisor: Rasool Jalili
B.Sc., Department of Computer Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
1991-1995
Thesis: Design and implementation of a Compiler for Eiffel Programming Language
Supervisor: Sonia Sehat-Niaki
Publications
• D. Tam, R. Azimi, L. Soares, and M. Stumm, RapidMRC: Approximating L2 Miss Rate Curves on
Commodity Systems for Online Optimizations, to appear in Proceedings of 15 th International
Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS
XIV), Washington, DC, USA, Mar. 2009.
• R. Azimi, L. Soares, M. Stumm, A. Demke-Brown, and T. Walsh, PATH: Fine-grained Page Access
Tracking to Improve Memory Management. In Proceedings of International Symposium on Memory
Management ISMM 2007, Montreal, Canada, Oct. 2007.
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• R. Azimi., System Software Utilization of Hardware Performance Monitoring Information, Ph.D.
degree thesis, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, Canada,
Aug. 2007.
• R. Wisniewski, R. Azimi, M. Desnoyers, M. Michael, J. Moreira, D. Shiloach, and L. Soares,
Experiences Understanding Performance in a Commercial Scale-Out Environment, In Proceedings
of Euro-Par 2007 Conference, Rennes, France, Aug. 2007.
• D. Tam, R. Azimi, L. Soares, and M. Stumm, Managing Shared L2 Caches on Multicore Systems in
Software, In Workshop on the Interaction between Operating Systems and Computer Architecture,
Held in junction with 2007 International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA-34), San
Diego, CA, USA, June 2007.
• D. Tam, R. Azimi, and M. Stumm, Thread Clustering: Sharing-Aware Scheduling on SMP-CMP-
SMT Multiprocessors. In Proceedings of the 2 nd EuroSys Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, Mar. 2007.
• R. Azimi, M. Stumm, and R. Wisniewski, Online Performance Analysis by Statistical Sampling of
Microprocessor Performance Counters. In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on
Supercomputing (ICS05), Boston, MA, June 2005
• R. W. Wisniewski, P. F. Sweeney, K. Sudeep, M. Hauswirth, E. Duesterwald, C. Cascaval, and R.
Azimi, Performance and Environment Monitoring for Whole-System Characterization and
Optimization. In Proceedings of the 2nd IBM Watson Conference on Interaction between
Architecture, Circuits, and Compilers, Yorktown Heights, NY, Oct. 2004.
• D. Tam, R. Azimi, H. A. Jacobsen, Building content-Based publish/subscribe systems using
distributed hash tables. In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Databases, Information
Systems and Peer-to-Peer Computing, Berlin, Germany, Sep. 2003.
• R. Azimi and A. Bilas. miNI: Reducing network interface memory requirements with dynamic
handle lookup. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM International Conference on Supercomputing
(ICS03), San Francisco, CA, June 2003.
• J. Appavoo, M. Auslander, D. Da Silva, O. Krieger, M. Ostrowski, B. Rosenburg, R. W. Wisniewski,
J. Xenidis, M. Stumm, B. Gamsa, and R. Azimi, R. Fingas, A. Tam, and D. Tam. Enabling scalable
performance for general purpose workloads on shared memory multiprocessors, IBM Research
Report RC22863, June 2003.
• R. Christodoulopoulou, R. Azimi, and A. Bilas. Dynamic data replication: An approach to providing
fault-tolerant shared memory clusters. In Proceedings of the 9th IEEE Symposium on High-
Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA9), Anaheim, CA, Feb. 2003.
• R. Azimi. miNI: Minimizing network interface requirements by dynamic handle lookup, M.A.Sc.
degree thesis, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, Canada,
Sep. 2002.
• R. Azimi and A. Bilas. Evaluating the performance impact of dynamic handle lookup in modern
network interfaces. In Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Workshop on Novel Uses of System Area
Networks (SAN-2), Anaheim, CA, Feb. 2003.
• A. Bilas, C. R. Gibson, R. Azimi, R. Christodoulopoulou, and P. Jamieson. Using system emulation
to model next-generation shared virtual memory clusters. Special Issue of Cluster Computing: the
Journal of Networks, Software Tools and Applications. June 2002.
• R. Azimi. The design and implementation of memory management for an object-oriented operating
system. M.S. degree thesis, Department of Computer Engineering, Sharif University of Technology,
Tehran, Iran, Sep. 1997.
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• R. Azimi, and F. Rostamabadi. The design and implementation of a compiler for Eiffel
programming language, B.S. degree thesis, Department of Computer Engineering, Sharif University
of Technology, Tehran, Iran, Sep. 1995.
Other Presentations
• R. Azimi, David Tam, Livio Soares, and Michael Stumm. Enhancing operating system algorithms
through hardware performance monitoring, Second International Workshop on Functionality of
Hardware Performance Monitors (FHPM), held at MICRO-39, Orlando, FL, USA, Dec. 2006.
• R. Azimi, Livio Soares, and Michael Stumm. Online CPU performance monitoring and its potential
applications, Invited Talk. IBM T.J. Watson Lab, Yorktown Heights NY, Nov. 2006.
• D. Tam, R. Azimi, and Michael Stumm. Thread Clustering: Sharing-Aware Scheduling on SMP-
CMP-SMT Multiprocessors, Poster presentation at the 2006 IBM CASCON conference. IBM
Toronto Lab, Oct. 2006.
• R. Azimi, and A. Bilas. Experiences with user-level communication in a cluster of SMPs, Poster
presentation at Nortel Institute of Technology Day, Fields Institute, Toronto. July 2001.
Scholarships and Awards
• The Government of Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS), 2005-2006.
• The Government of Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS), 2003-2004.
• The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Fellowship, 2001-
2002, 2002-2003, and 2004-2005
Work Experience
Member of Technical Staff, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Markham, Canada
Feb. 2007-Sep. 2008
AMD is the world’s second largest manufacturer of x86 processors, and one of the largest manufacturers of
graphical processing units (GPUs).
• As the AMD’s on-site engineer at the IBM Toronto lab, was in charge of conducting extensive
performance analysis and optimization of IBM’s large system software such as IBM DB2 (an
RDBMS engine) and IBM J9 (a Java virtual machine) on medium-scale multiprocessors that are
built of AMD’s new generation of quad-core Opteron processors (Barcelona and Shanghai).
• Designed and implemented a variety of hardware performance monitoring tools and methods based
on AMD’s performance monitoring hardware, particularly exploiting the Instruction-Based
Sampling (IBS) feature, to be used in a runtime optimization environment.
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Designer and Software Developer Diversinet Co., Toronto, Canada
Apr. 2000 – Aug. 2000
Diversinet provides solutions for securing and provisioning mobile business applications in healthcare and
financial services. The company is based in Toronto, Canada, with a global network of resellers and agents.
• Designed and implemented Computer network security software, (Encryption/Decryption schemes,
Digital Signature technology, and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technology) for mobile devices
and smart cards.
Programmer, Team Leader, and Systems Engineer, Procom Technology Inc. Tehran, Iran
Sep. 1997- Dec. 1999
Procom Technology was a manufacturer of network attached storage servers and Web appliances.
• Was a team leader in the CacheFORCE100 project, a high performance Web Proxy/Cache network
appliance. Coordinated a team of five programmers to build and integrate numerous system software
components mostly written in C, C++, Java, Perl, and CGI. The project also included substantial
performance analysis and optimization effort in order to achieve performance (in terms of server
throughput and response time) competitive to high-end products in the market. Delivered the first
beta release of the fully functional product as scheduled.
• System software developer in the High Performance Web Server project. Designed and implemented
a set of performance optimizations in the Linux kernel to boost the throughput of Apache Web
server. Also modified parts of Apache 1.3.1 to exploit such optimizations.
System Administrator/Engineering Support, Tehran Municipality Statistics and Computer
Organization (TMCSO), Tehran, Iran
Aug. 1996-Sep. 1997
• Member of technology and engineering team that provided technological support and engineering
consultation for several third-party contractor companies who were developing a set of large-scale
information systems to automate work flow in Tehran’s municipality. Used Sun Solaris 2.5 and
Informix Online 5.0 RDBMS engine as the base platform.
Programmer/Analyst, Feiz-Ghadir Industrial (FGI), Tehran, Iran
Sep. 1995-Aug. 1996
FGI was a company of around 200 employees that manufactured auto parts for large Iranian auto companies.
• Analyzed FGI’s financial and inventory systems and participated in the design, development, and
testing of several object-oriented applications to automate these information systems.
Teaching Experience
• Instructor, Operating Systems (CSCC69) University of Toronto, Scarborough Campus, Fall 2006
• Instructor, Operating Systems (CSCC69) (co-taught with Alan Rosselet), University of Toronto,
Scarborough Campus, Summer 2005
• Teaching Assistant, Microprocessor Software (CSC372), University of Toronto, 2002, 2003 (Head
TA, in charge of designing and implementing the lab assignments), and 2006 (Head TA)
• Teaching Assistant, Operating Systems (CSCC69), University of Toronto, 2005
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• Teaching Assistant, Communication and Design II (ECE299), University of Toronto, 2005 (Head
TA, in charge of designing and implementing lab assignments)
• Teaching Assistant, Operating Systems (ECE344), University of Toronto, 2001, and 2003 (Head
TA)
• Teaching Assistant, Computer Organization (ECE341), 2001, University of Toronto, 2001, 2003,
2004 (Head TA)
• Teaching Assistant, System Software Programming (ECE443), University of Toronto, 2001 and
2003
• Teaching Assistant, Programming Fundamentals in C++ (ECE106), University of Toronto, 2003
(Head TA, in charge of designing and implementing lab assignments), 2004
• Teaching Assistant, Software Tools and Systems Programming (CSC209), University of Toronto,
2001
• Teaching Assistant, Computer Networks (CSC458), University of Toronto, 2001, 2002, and 2003
• Teaching Assistant, Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis (ECE242), University of Toronto,
2000, 2001
• Teaching Assistant, Principles of Programming Languages (CSC326), University of Toronto, 2001
• Instructor, Machines, Languages, and Computation, Azad University of Tehran, 1998-1999
• Instructor, Computer Programming in Pascal, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, 1997
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