Zhizhen Zhong
Postdoctoral Associate
Email:
zhizhenz [at] mit (dot) edu
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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.
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.
[SIGCOMM 2023] First Photonic-Electronic Computing SmartNIC System 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
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
Conference
External Reviewer, 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
Program Committee, WCSP 2019
Journals
Reviewer, IEEE/ACM
Transactions on Networking
Reviewer, IEEE Communications Magazine
Reviewer, Optics Express
Reviewer, Photonics Research
Reviewer, IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology
Reviewer, IEEE/OSA 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
Photography
In my spare time, I enjoy traveling and
capturing the
frozen time. See some of my photographical publications (peer reviewed) here: 1x
Research Areas:
Optics & Photonics | Systems & Networking | Programmable Hardware
Impact Areas:
Reconfigurable Optical
Networks |
Photonic Computing Systems
Research
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:
- High-Performance Photonic-Electronic Computing Systems
- Lightning [SIGCOMM 2023]: a SmartNIC that serves DNN inference with a co-designed pipelined datapath across photonics and electronics units.
- IOI [OptSys2021]: a Transceiver in WANs and data centers for on-fiber photonic computing [HotNets 2023] inside the communication networks.
- NetCast [Science 2022]: a Network Architecture that achieves delocalized photonic DNN inference over deployed telecom fiber links.
- Cross-Layer IP-Optical Reconfigurable Networks
- Arrow [SIGCOMM 2021]: a Traffic Engineering System that recovers from fiber cuts by reconfiguring the light from cut fiber to healthy fibers.
- Bow [OFC 2021 Postdeadline]: an Optical Networks Controller that configures amplifiers with Bayes. Opt. for fast wavelength reconfiguration.
- FlexWAN [SIGCOMM 2023]: an Optical Networks 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.
Short Bio
Teaching
Videos
Publications ( ⚑ Preprints | ★ Selected | 📋 Full List )
Open Office Hour
Press Coverage
Selected Talks
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
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
Program Committee, WCSP 2019
Reviewer, IEEE Communications Magazine
Reviewer, Optics Express
Reviewer, Photonics Research
Reviewer, IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology
Reviewer, IEEE/OSA 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