Alvin R. Lebeck

Professor of Computer Science

My research is in the general area of computer architecture. However, I have interests in nearly all computer systems related topics, spanning from atoms to applications.

Appointments and Affiliations

  • Professor of Computer Science
  • Core Faculty in Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Contact Information

  • Office Location: D308 Lev Sci Res Ctr, Durham, NC 27708
  • Office Phone: (919) 660-6551
  • Email Address: alvy@cs.duke.edu
  • Websites:

Education

  • B.S. University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1989
  • M.S. University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1991
  • Ph.D. University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1995

Research Interests

Accelerating Statistical Machine Learning
Novel computer architectures targeted at machine learning problems that rely on Markov Chain Monte Carlo techniques and probabilistic computing in general.

Multicore/multiprocessor and Distributed Systems (including data centers)
Cache coherence protocols, memory consistency, runtime systems to expose and exploit parallelism. I also explore the use of new hardware technology in data centers.

Architectures for Emerging Technologies  
Computational paradigms enabled by new technologies.

Memory Systems 
General aspects of memory hierarchies such as cache design, prefetching, latency tolerance, etc.

Energy Efficient Computing 
Processor and memory design, operating system support.

Awards, Honors, and Distinctions

  • Alan D. Berenbaum Distinguished Service Award. ACM SIGARCH. 2020
  • Fellow. IEEE. 2017
  • Honorable Mention, IEEE MICRO Top Picks from Computer Architecture Conferences . IEEE MICRO. 2017
  • Best Paper. 6th International Workshop on Network on Chip Architectures. 2013
  • IEEE MICRO Top Picks from Computer Architecture Conferences . IEEE. 2010
  • IEEE MICRO Top Picks from Computer Architecture Conferences . IEEE MICRO. 2009
  • Best Paper. 31st Annual ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Microarchitecture. 1998
  • NSF CAREER. National Science Foundation. 1997
  • Outstanding Graduate Student Researcher. Department of Computer Sciences, University of Wisconsin at Madison. 1995

Courses Taught

  • COMPSCI 210D: Introduction to Computer Systems
  • COMPSCI 250D: Computer Architecture
  • COMPSCI 390: Topics in Computer Science
  • COMPSCI 590: Advanced Topics in Computer Science
  • ECE 250D: Computer Architecture
  • ECE 652: Advanced Computer Architecture II

In the News

Representative Publications

  • Snyder, J., and A. R. Lebeck. “Fast Convergence to Fairness for Reduced Long Flow Tail Latency in Datacenter Networks.” In Proceedings  2022 Ieee 36th International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, Ipdps 2022, 1007–17, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1109/IPDPS53621.2022.00102.
  • Snyder, John, Alvin R. Lebeck, and Danyang Zhuo. “RDMA Congestion Control: It's Only for the Compliant.” Ieee Micro, 2022, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1109/mm.2022.3208746.
  • Zhang, X., R. Bashizade, Y. Wang, S. Mukherjee, and A. R. Lebeck. “Statistical robustness of Markov chain Monte Carlo accelerators.” In International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems  Asplos, 959–74, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1145/3445814.3446697.
  • Bashizade, Ramin, Xiangyu Zhang, Sayan Mukherjee, and Alvin R. Lebeck. “Accelerating Markov Random Field Inference with Uncertainty Quantification.” Corr abs/2108.00570 (2021).
  • Zeng, H., C. S. Ellis, A. R. Lebeck, and A. Vahdat. “Currentcy: A unifying abstraction for expressing energy management policies.” In Proceedings of the General Track: 2003 Usenix Annual Technical Conference, 43–56, 2020.