Dr James Garland

Academic and Research Experience

Research assistant on a PhD project designing low power embedded hardware for the SeNDT project in Trinity College Dublin.

PhD Research, researching Micro-architectural Optimisations of Machine Learning Algorithms in FPGAs, ASICs and Embedded Systems for Power, Area Conservation.

Current research interests include Micro-architectural optimisations in hardware and low-level software of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. These optimisations are primarily targeted at reducing power and gate count in FPGA and ASIC devices and increasing performance in embedded low power IoT Edge devices.

Peer reviewer for IEEE Access, IEEE TVLSI, Elsevier Microelectronics, Journal of the Chinese Institute of Engineers.

Publications and Outputs

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

Furlong, R., O'Brien, V., Garland, J., & Dominguez-Mateos, F. (2021). Metric Embedding Sub-discrimination Study. arXiv preprint arXiv:2102.03176.

Garland, J., & Gregg, D. (2020). HOBFLOPS CNNs: Hardware Optimized Bitsliced Floating-Point Operations Convolutional Neural Networks. PREPRINT (Version 1) available at Research Square DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-866039/v1

Alam, S. A., Garland, J., & Gregg, D. (2021). Low-precision Logarithmic Number Systems: Beyond Base-2. ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimisation (TACO) 18, 4, Article 47 (December 2021), 25 pages. DOI 10.1145/3461699

Garland, J. and Gregg D. (2018) ‘Low Complexity Multiply Accumulate Units for Convolutional Neural Networks with Weight-Sharing’, in ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimisation (TACO), vol. 15, no. 3, August 2018, Article 31, pp. 1-24, DOI: 10.1145/3233300

Garland, J. and Gregg D. (2017) ‘Low Complexity Multiply Accumulate Unit for Weight-Sharing Convolutional Neural Networks’, in IEEE Computer Architecture Letters, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 132-135, July-Dec. 1 2017, DOI: 10.1109/LCA.2017.2656880

Book Chapters

Anderson, A; Garland, J; Wen, Y; Barabasz, B; Persand, K; Vasudevan, A; Gregg, D. (2019) Chapter 6, ‘Hardware and software performance in deep learning’ in ‘Many-Core Computing: Hardware and Software’, pp: 141-161, ISBN: 978-1-78561-582-5.

Garland, J. and Gregg D. (2017) ‘Low Complexity Multiply Accumulate Unit for Weight-Sharing Convolutional Neural Networks’, in ‘ACACES 2017 Poster Abstracts’, pp. 53-56, HiPEAC, the European Network of Excellence on High Performance and Embedded Architecture and Compilation.

Conference Proceedings and Papers

Garland, J. and Gregg D. (2021) ‘HOBFLOPS CNNs: Hardware Optimized Bitslice-Parallel Floating-Point Operations for Convolutional Neural Networks’, Presented at the 21st Workshop on Compilers for Parallel Computing (CPC’2021) – Virtual Event

Garland, J. and Gregg D. (2019) ‘Low Complexity Multiply-Accumulate Units for Convolutional Neural Networks with Weight-Sharing’, talk at HiPEAC January 2019, Valencia, Spain.

Garland, J. and Gregg D. (2017) ‘Low Complexity Multiply Accumulate Unit for Weight-Sharing Convolutional Neural Networks’, Poster presentation, HiPEAC ACACES 2017, Fiuggi, Italy.

Research Supervision

Current Research Students

2019-Present, Institute of Technology, Carlow-

• Bovenizer, Christopher (2020-2022), IRC Employment-Based Program M.Sc., “Live, On-site Automation of Harvesting Equipment using Artificial Intelligence, Vision and Sensor Systems”, Institute of Technology, Carlow and Tanco Autowrap Limited.
• Furlong, Ryan (2019-2021), President’s EngCore Research Fellowship M.Sc., “Development platform for Artificial Intelligence at the network edge”.
• Connolly, Luke (2019-2021), President’s EngCore Research Fellowship M.Sc., “UAV obstacle avoidance”, Institute of Technology, Carlow.

Past research students

2019, Institute of Technology Carlow-

• Brennan, Colm (2019), M.Sc. in Communications Technology Management, “How can Machine Learning be Applied to Maritime Data Information to Aid Targeted Patrolling by the Irish Naval Service?”

2006-2008, Trinity College Dublin-

• Kantas, Charalampos (2008), M.Sc. in Computer Science (Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing), “Design & Analysis of Power-Efficient Embedded FPGA Sensor Systems”
• Meehan, Eoin (2006), M.Sc. in Computer Science (Ubiquitous Computing), “Are you looking at me?”
• Carter, James (2006), M.Sc. in Computer Science (Ubiquitous Computing), “Study of power saving on Mica2 motes.”
• McKnight, Joseph (2006), M.Sc. in Computer Science (Ubiquitous Computing), “Investigating an Integrated Inertial Gesture Recognition System and Vibrotactile Display”

Areas of Interest as a Supervisor include

• ASIC and FPGA design
• Electronics
• Embedded Computing and Sensor systems
• Machine Learning

Engagement and Collaboration

• 2020: The tech journalist Timothy Prickett Morgan of The Next Platform web site and Youtube channel interviewed me on Monday 27th July 2020 about our HOBFLOPS CNN work.
• 2019-Present: Research collaboration with Adjunct Professor Dr. Francisco Domínguez Mateos and Daniel Palacios Alonso of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos.
• 2018-present: Peer reviewer for IEEE Access, IEEE TVLSI, Elsevier Microelectronics, Journal of the Chinese Institute of Engineers.
• 2016-Present: Judge for the annual Xilinx Open Hardware Competition.
• 2018-Present: St Columba’s National School I.T. support.

Research Funding

• 2020-2022, Irish Research Council Employment Based Program.
• 2019-2021, President’s EngCore Research Fellowship.
• 2019: Enterprise Ireland Innovation Voucher: EDR 775 Nmictech Ltd.
• Worked as a Research Assistant on a Ph.D. research project in Trinity College Dublin, 2003-2004.
• Sought industrial collaboration in an expression of interest for research proposals for the Microelectronics Circuits Centre Ireland (MCCI) call.