FPGA Technology at Crossroads
(Preparation is underway for launch in Fall 2026 with seminars scheduled at least monthly.)
The Crossraods FPGA Seminar Series aims to offer high-quality 1-hour FPGA research presentations in an online format open to all interested. Seminars will be delivered over Zoom with live Q&A. Please see the seminar listings for schedule.
Recorded seminars (with speakers’ permission) will be posted on our YouTube channel.
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If you have suggestions for speakers and topics in the FPGA field, please contact the volunteer organizers.
The Crossroads seminars has its origin in the former Intel/VMware Crossroads 3D-FPGA Academic Research Center.
Upcoming Seminars
Friday, October 16, 2026 | 1pm~2pm ET
Hypothesizing Autonomous Accelerator Design
Zhiru Zhang,
Cornell University
Abstract: The emergence of AI agents raises an intriguing question: can we fully automate the accelerator development process? While agentic software engineering has shown remarkable progress, directly extending existing approaches to hardware remains challenging. Unlike software, accelerator development is constrained by two major bottlenecks. First, current hardware design methodologies rely on costly modeling, synthesis, and implementation flows that can require hours to days for a single iteration. Second, each new accelerator often requires substantial manual effort to construct and optimize the accompanying software stack. Together, these bottlenecks fundamentally limit the rate at which designers and AI agents can explore the hardware-software co-design space. This talk explores the hypothesis of autonomous accelerator design, and shares results and lessons learned from our recent work on (1) new abstractions that help unify accelerator design and programming, (2) differentiable compiler optimization, and (3) agentic approaches to compiler construction. I will discuss how these directions may collectively move us closer to a future of more autonomous accelerator design. I will discuss how these directions may collectively move us closer to a future of more autonomous accelerator design.
Bio: Zhiru Zhang is a Professor in the School of ECE at Cornell University. His current research investigates new algorithms, design methodologies, and automation tools for heterogeneous computing. Dr. Zhang is an IEEE Fellow and has been honored with the Intel Outstanding Researcher Award, AWS AI Amazon Research Award, Facebook Research Award, Google Faculty Research Award, DAC Under-40 Innovators Award, DARPA Young Faculty Award, IEEE CEDA Ernest S. Kuh Early Career Award, and NSF CAREER Award. He has also received 10+ best paper awards from premier conferences and journals in computer systems and EDA. He has founded or helped build several successful startups. Most notably, he co-founded AutoESL, an HLS startup acquired by Xilinx (now part of AMD). AutoESL's technology became Vivado HLS (now Vitis HLS), the most widely-used HLS tool for FPGA accelerator design.
Friday, October 30, 2026 | 1pm~2pm ET
A Versatile FPGA Tensor Block for MXFP Precisions
Marwan Mekhemer,
University of Waterloo and AMD
Latest News
June 2026
We are excited to announce that we are reviving the Crossroads seminar series for Fall! The seminar series will feature high quality presentations on FPGAs in an online format open to all interested.
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