Antonio Barbalace

Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) Institute for Computing Systems Architecture School of Informatics The University of Edinburgh 1.12 Informatics Forum 10 Crichton St, Edinburgh, Scotland EH8 9AB abarbala @ ed.ac.uk http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/people/staff/Antonio_Barbalace.html

I am Antonio Barbalace, Senior Lecturer with the Institute for Computing Systems Architecture (ICSA) in the School of Informatics at The University of Edinburgh. I am the current ICSA Lab Manager, interim IoT Lab Manager, and MSc in Computer Science program director.

I am interested in computer systems in a broad sense, but my research focuses on system software. Specifically, operating systems (Linux, DragonFly BSD, Darwin, L4), virtualization environments (QEMU, QEMU/KVM, and Xen), and run-times/compilers/linkers (LLVM, gcc, ld, gold) for parallel, heterogeneous and distributed computer architectures from embedded to data-center scale (including near data processing platforms). Lately, I am thinkering around the idea of operating system for Quantum processing units.
My interests include general-purpose and real-time scheduling, synchronization protocols, distributed algorithms, networking, and storage systems. Performance analysis is my favorite way of investigation using tracing or simulation tools. Lately, I am investigating power efficiency, fault-tolerance, and security. I am also interested in industrial control systems, signal and image processing.

Education and Experience

Before moving to the University of Edinburgh I held an Assistant Professor position at Stevens Institute of Technology -- just in front of NYC. Earlier, I was a Principal Research Scientist and Manager at the Germen Research Center of Huawei in Munich, working within the OS and Virtualization team of the IT Software Infrastructure Lab (director Dr. Goetz Brasche). There, I started the work on the NDP Operating System, some real-time projects, and established a new microkernel hypervisor to be formally verified.
Prior to the German Research Center, I spent 5 years as a Research Assistant Professor, and before a postdoc, at the Systems Software Research Group of ECE Virginia Tech, working closely with my mentor and supervisor Prof. Binoy Ravindran. At VT, I started with Prof. Ravindran the family of Popcorn projects (Linux, Xen, LLVM) which looked at how to manage hardware heterogeneity. At VT I also worked on other real-time and hypervisor projects -- financed mainly by ONR and ASFOR.
Before moving to Virginia in November 2011, I was a Research Staff Member at the Italian National Research Council (CNR) in Padova, Italy, working at the big physics experiment RFX. I graduated with my PhD at the end of 2010 from the University of Padova under the supervision of Professors Giuseppe Zollino, Adriano Luchetta and Gabriele Manduchi.

Linkedin Profile

Publications

Google Scholar Profile
Microsoft Academic Profile
DBLP
Edinburgh Research Explorer

Software

System-nuts' Research Group Repository
Sourceforge (Personal and Popcorn Linux)

Current Projects

NEW! Data-center scale classical simulation of quantum computer
NEW! Quantum circuit cutting
Popcorn Linux Next++
Popcorn Compiler Framework for managed languages
Popcorn Linux for CC shared memory heterogeneous processors
Compiler (LLVM) optimizations based on physical laws and quantities
Data-center scale in-storage processing

Past Projects

(Edinburgh) Anubis, IO-aware VM scheduling (Linux/KVM)
(Edinburgh) FragVisor
(Stevens) H-Containers
(Huawei/Stevens) BlockNDP
(Huawei/Stevens) ExtOS
(Virginia Tech) Popcorn Linux and Compiler Framework
(Virginia Tech) Popcorn Xen
(Virginia Tech) Fault Tolerant Linux (FT-Popcorn)
(Virginia Tech) cthread
(Virginia Tech) linuxmf-emu
(Virginia Tech) KairosVM
(Virginia Tech) ChronOS Linux
(Virginia Tech) Resilire
(Virginia Tech) Linux TM
(University of Padova) SCHEDsimula, Scheduler Simulator
(Euratom) BaseLib/MARTe, Multi Application Real Time executor
(University of Padova) Linux/RTAI Live Distribution

Contributed Projects

MDSplus
FreeRTOS
UBOOT
RTAI
ADEOS

Current Postdocs

none

Current Students

Xiangyu Ren PhD (UoE)
Amir Noohi PhD (UoE)
Alan Nair PhD (UoE)
Pei Mu PhD (UoE)
Raven Szewczyk PhD (UoE) co-advised with Tom Spink (St. Andrews)
Karim Manaouil PhD (UoE)
Tong Xing PhD (UoE)
Nikos Mavrogeorgis PhD (UoE)

Jiaxun Yang UG Research Assistant (UoE)
Cong Xiong UG Project/Research Assistant (UoE)
Dale Huang MInf 2nd year (UoE)
Wojciech Boncela UG Project (UoE)
Tom Blackburn UG Project (UoE)
Zhengyi Chen UG Project (UoE)
Donald Jennings UG Project (UoE)
Mason Wan UG Project (UoE)
Jingwen MS Research Assistant (UoE)

Past Postdocs

Dr. Maxime France-Pillois (CodePlay/Intel, Edinburgh, Scotland)
Dr. Mvondo Djob Barbe Thystere (Associate Professor, University of Rennes, France)
Dr. Yuan Wen (Lecturer, University of Aberdeen, Scotland)

Past Students

Amir Khordadi PhD (UoE)?
Harsha PhD (UoE) co-advised with Pramod Bhatotia (TUM)
Ho-Ren Chuang PhD (VT), 2020 Shared-something in Popcorn Linux OS
Christopher Jelesnianski PhD (VT), 2020 Runtime/compiler/linker for heterogeneous platforms
Rob Lyerly PhD (VT), 2019 Scheduling in heterogeneous-ISA OS-capable and CPU-GPU platforms
Peng Lu PhD (VT), 2015 Citibank, New York, New York, US
Wei Wang PhD (Stevens),
Shikha Sonenj MS (Stevens),
Aayush Patel MS (Stevens)
Elliot Wasem BS (Stevens)
Anthony Carno MS (VT),
Yuzhong Wen MS (VT), Replicated process execution on a replicated-kernel OS
Saif Ansary MS (VT), CISCO Systems, San Jose, CA, US
Sharath Bhat MEng (VT), Intel Corporation, Denver, CO, US
Michael Drescher MS (VT), Zeta Associates, Fairfax, VA, US
David Katz MS (VT), The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MA, US
Charlie Kendir BS (VT), L3 Communication, Arlington, TX, US
Andy Martin BS (VT), Qualcomm, NC, US
Akshay Ravichandran MS (VT), Huge Network, WDC, US
Ajithchandra Saya MEng (VT), Intel Corporation, Austin, TX, US
Ben Shelton MS (VT), Intel Corporation, Austin, TX, US
Enrico Marini MS (University of Padova), Reply SpA, Padova, Italy

Teaching

Operating Systems (INFR) 2023/2024 Semester 2, The University of Edinburgh
Operating Systems (INFR) 2022/2023 Semester 2, The University of Edinburgh
Operating Systems (INFR) 2021/2022 Semester 2, The University of Edinburgh
Operating Systems (INFR) 2020/2021 Semester 2, The University of Edinburgh
Operating Systems (INFR) 2019/2020 Semester 2, The University of Edinburgh
Computer Architecture 2019/2020 Spring Semester, Stevens Institute of Technology
Operating Systems 2018/2019 Spring Semester, Stevens Institute of Technology
Applied Software Design 2015/2016 Spring Semester, Virginia Tech
Real-time Systems 2014/2015 Spring Semester, Virginia Tech -- substitute instructor
Real-time Systems/C Programming and Interfaces 2010/2011, Spring Semester, University of Padova
Real-time Systems/C Programming and Interfaces 2009/2010, Spring Semester, University of Padova
Real-time Systems/C Programming and Interfaces 2008/2009, Spring Semester, University of Padova

Partially updated on the 8^th of October 2023