Zhizhen Zhong
Postdoctoral Associate
Email:
zhizhenz [at] mit (dot) edu
Google Scholar |
CSAIL Profile |
ResearchGate |
LinkedIn |
GitHub |
CV
In this constantly evolving landscape of technology, light-based
computing, commonly referred to as "optical"
or "photonic" computing, is a revolutionary paradigm shift
promising higher computing frequency and less
energy consumption than traditional digital computing.
This new course, offered at MIT EECS, aims to introduce students
to this exciting and rapidly growing field,
blending topics from photonics and optics to computer networks
and systems.
1) How can light be used for computing, and why should we build
optical computing hardware?
2) What are the fundamental devices used for photonic computing?
3) How do these photonic devices integrate into modern computer
systems (both hardware and software) to serve
real-world computing workloads?
For more information, please refer to the course website: https://light-computing.github.io/
I commit 1-2 hours of my spare time every week as my open
office hour to meet, advise, mentor
and
help students/researchers who belong to underrepresented
groups in the Computer Systems/Networking
and
Optics/Photonics community. Please fill out this form if you are interested.
[ACM SIGCOMM 2023] First Photonic-Electronic Computing SmartNIC for Real-Time AI
MIT News |
Innovation Origins |
Semiconductor Engineering |
TechXplore
[Science 2022] Delocalized Photonic Deep Learning on
the Internet's Edge
MIT
News |
Optics & Photonics News |
TechXplore
[ACM SIGCOMM 2021] ARROW: Restoration-Aware Traffic
Engineering
ACM TechNews |
MIT
News |
TechXplore |
Lifewire |
21st Century Tech |
Future Tech
[NSDI 2021] Risk-Driven IP-Optical Network
Management
Facebook Engineering Blog
[CLEO-PR/OECC 2017] Sub-Wavelength
Optical-Circuit-Switched Networks
IEEE Photonics Society News
Lightning: A Reconfigurable
Photonic-Electronic SmartNIC for Fast and
Energy-Efficient
Inference
January
2024, Google Tech Talk, Google, USA
October 2023, Stanford System Seminar, Stanford University, USA
October 2023, Berkeley NetSys Seminar, UC Berkeley, USA
September 2023, ACM SIGCOMM 2023, New York City, USA | Website | Video
Leveraging Optical Noise for Fast
Fiber Cut Recovery
August
2020, ACM SIGCOMM 2020 Workshop on
Optical
Systems Design
(OptSys 2020), online |
Website
The Impact of Social Distancing on
Facebook's Optical Backbone
August
2020, ACM SIGCOMM 2020 Workshop on
Optical
Systems Design
(OptSys 2020), online |
Website
Traffic-Driven Self-Ddaptive
Optical Networking
October
2019, Special Seminar, China Telecom
Beijing
Research
Institute, Beijing, China
July 2019, Special Seminar, University College London
May 2019, Ph.D. Defense, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
March 2019, Special Seminar, Nokia Bell Labs (Crawford Hill), Holmdel, NJ, USA | Slides
Organization
Vice Chair, Optica Technical Group on Optical Communications
Conference
Program
Committee, USENIX NSDI
2025
Chair, HotOptics 2024
Program Committee, IEEE ICNP 2024
External Reviewer, USENIX NSDI 2024
Artifact Evaluation Committee Co-Chair, ACM SIGCOMM 2023
Program Committee, ACM SIGCOMM 2023
Program Committee, USENIX NSDI 2023
Artifact Evaluation Committee, ACM SIGCOMM 2022
External Reviewer, ACM IMC 2022
Program Committee, ACM SIGCOMM 2021 Workshop on Optical Systems (OptSys 2021)
Artifact Evaluation Committee, ACM SIGCOMM 2021
Journal
Reviewer,
IEEE/ACM
Transactions on Networking
Reviewer, IEEE Communications Magazine
Reviewer, Optics Express
Reviewer, Photonics Research
Reviewer, IEEE/Optica Journal of Lightwave Technology
Reviewer, IEEE/Optica Journal of Optical Communications and Networking
Reviewer, IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management
Reviewer, IEEE Photoics Journal
Reviewer, IEEE Access
Reviewer, ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review (SIGCOMM CCR)
Reviewer, Photonic Network Communications
Reviewer, Optical Switching and Networking
I am a postdoctoral researcher
at the MIT
Schwarzman
College of Computing.
Before joining MIT, I was a
visiting researcher at Meta
(Facebook)
working on reconfigurable
fiber-optics network
infrastructures. I received my
PhD in EE from Tsinghua
University in July
2019.
I was also a visiting PhD
student in CS at the University
of California Davis. My
PhD thesis is on
"Traffic-Driven Self-Adaptive Optical Networking"
that
designs reconfigurable optical
networks for spatiotemporal
traffic demand dynamics in both
data
centers and
wide-area networks. I completed
my
Bachelor's Degrees in EE and
Economics from Tsinghua
University in 2014 and
2016, respectively.
My work has been recognized
by the Best Paper
Award from OECC
conference in 2022,
Zijing-Scholar Fellowship from
Tsinghua
University in 2019,
the 1st Place Best
Poster Award (1 out of
600+ posters) on IEEE
CLEO-PR/OECC/PGC conference from
IEEE Photonics
Society in
2017, the Tang Lixin Scholarship
from Tsinghua
University in 2016.
Photography
In
my spare time, I enjoy
traveling and
capturing the
frozen time. See some of my
photographical publications
(peer reviewed) here: 1x
Methodologies:
Optics & Photonics | Computer Systems & Networking | Compiler & HW/SW Interface
Impact Areas:
Reconfigurable Optical Networks |
Photonic Computing Systems
Research
![overview](jobsearch/overview.png)
I am building the next-generation networked computer systems by engineering the unique
properties of light with emerging optical technologies to optimize data-intensive workloads like
machine learning. Towards this vision, my research takes an application-centric approach to co-design different
stacks of the system: from silicon photonics and fiber optics devices, to computer architecture
and programmable hardware, all the way to scheduling algorithms and system software.
My Research Statement describes my
long-term vision towards Rearchitecting Next-Generation Computer
Systems with Photonic-Electronic
Co-Design.
There is also a Spotlight Article by MIT CSAIL featuring
my research and teaching work during my postdoc.
Some Highlights are:
- In-Network Photonic Computing - Building
revolutionary machine learning (ML) systems that
compute as data moves on the datapath.
- Lightning [SIGCOMM 2023]: a Photonic-Electronic SmartNIC that serves DNN inference packets with a pipelined datapath across photonic matrix multiplication and electronics computing units.
- IOI [OptSys2021]: a Photonic-Electronic Transceiver for on-fiber photonic computing [HotNets 2023] inside the communication networks.
- NetCast [Science 2022]: an In-Network Computing Architecture that splits photonic DNN computation over deployed telecom fiber links.
- Reconfigurable IP-Optical Networking - Building
converged optical-IP networks that adjusts
topology/rate/protocol based on workload requirements.
- Arrow [SIGCOMM 2021]: a Cross-Layer Traffic Engineering System that recovers from fiber cuts by reconfiguring the light to healthy fibers.
- Bow [OFC 2021 Postdeadline]: an Optical Layer Controller that configures amplifiers with Bayes. Opt. for fast wavelength reconfiguration.
- FlexWAN [SIGCOMM 2023]: a Hardware-Software Optical System that supports reconfigurable fiber spectrum allocation for wide-area networks.
- TopoOpt [NSDI 2023]: a Reconfigurable DNN Training Cluster in data centers that optimizes network topology and DNN parallelization strategy.
- Agile Virtual Instance Networking - Building
fine-grained yet agile systems that supports
flexible networking over virtualized cloud resources.
- MegaTE [SIGCOMM 2024]: a Bottom-Up Traffic Engineering System that manages fine-grained flows between millions of VMs or containers.
Teaching
Videos
Publications ( ⚑ Preprints | ★ Selected | 📋 Full List )
Open Office Hour
Press Coverage
Selected Talks
October 2023, Stanford System Seminar, Stanford University, USA
October 2023, Berkeley NetSys Seminar, UC Berkeley, USA
September 2023, ACM SIGCOMM 2023, New York City, USA | Website | Video
July 2019, Special Seminar, University College London
May 2019, Ph.D. Defense, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
March 2019, Special Seminar, Nokia Bell Labs (Crawford Hill), Holmdel, NJ, USA | Slides
Professional Services
Chair, HotOptics 2024
Program Committee, IEEE ICNP 2024
External Reviewer, USENIX NSDI 2024
Artifact Evaluation Committee Co-Chair, ACM SIGCOMM 2023
Program Committee, ACM SIGCOMM 2023
Program Committee, USENIX NSDI 2023
Artifact Evaluation Committee, ACM SIGCOMM 2022
External Reviewer, ACM IMC 2022
Program Committee, ACM SIGCOMM 2021 Workshop on Optical Systems (OptSys 2021)
Artifact Evaluation Committee, ACM SIGCOMM 2021
Reviewer, IEEE Communications Magazine
Reviewer, Optics Express
Reviewer, Photonics Research
Reviewer, IEEE/Optica Journal of Lightwave Technology
Reviewer, IEEE/Optica Journal of Optical Communications and Networking
Reviewer, IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management
Reviewer, IEEE Photoics Journal
Reviewer, IEEE Access
Reviewer, ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review (SIGCOMM CCR)
Reviewer, Photonic Network Communications
Reviewer, Optical Switching and Networking