Yifan Sun

Assistant Professor, Computer Science, William & Mary
McGlothlin-Street Hall 117 Williamsburg, VA 23185

(+1) 716-868-2480

Academic Appointments

8/2020 - Present Assistant Professor
Computer Science, William & Mary
Williamsburg, VA

Education

9/2013 - 8/2020 Ph.D. in Computer Engineering
Northeastern University
Boston, MA
9/2011 - 6/2013 M.S. in Electrical Engineering
University at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY
9/2007 - 6/2011 B.Eng. in Electrical Engineering
Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Wuhan, China
9/2008 - 6/2011 Bachelor in Business Administration (Minor)
Wuhan University
Wuhan, China

Honors & Awards

2025 CAREER Award
NSF
2023 Best Paper Award
CHI'23
2020 Best Paper Honorable Mention
CHI'20
2019 Outstanding Graduate Student in Experiential Learning
Northeastern University
2019 Teaching Award
Northeastern University College of Engineering
2018 Best Paper Award
ICPE
2016 Best Paper Candidate
IISWC
2013 Best Student Paper Award
WUWNET

Industry Experience

7/2018 - 12/2018 AMD
Software Engineer (Co-op)
Boxborough, MA
7/2016 - 12/2016 Dell EMC
Software Engineer (Co-op)
Hopkinton, MA

Grants

Total external funding at William & Mary: $1,685,843.

12/2024 Advancing Tools and Resources for the AMD ROCm Platform
AMD, Gift
$100,000
Sole PI
4/2025 - 3/2030 CAREER: Towards Next-Generation Human-in-the-Loop and Human-over-the-Loop Computer Architecture Performance Analysis Infrastructure
NSF, CAREER
$598,555
Sole PI
5/2024 - 4/2028 Enabling GPU Performance Simulation for Large-Scale Workloads with Lightweight Simulation Methods
NSF, SHF Core, Medium
$1,133,743 (my share $376,249)
PI: Yifan Sun (lead institution lead PI), Adwait Jog, Sreepathi Pai
12/2023 Binary Instrumentation for GPU Programs on AMD Platforms
AMD, Gift
$50,000
Sole PI
12/2023 HIP Development on AMD ROCm Platform
AMD, Gift
$50,000
Sole PI
5/2023 The Methods of Profiling and Tracing of GPU Programs Running on AMD ROCm Platforms
AMD, Gift
$44,000
Sole PI
5/2023 - 4/2026 Building Explainable Architecture with Simulation and Visualization Techniques
NSF, CRII
$175,000
Sole PI
3/2023 - 2/2026 Enabling Computer Architecture as a Service
NSF, CCRI (later renamed as CIRC), Planning-C
$100,000 (my share $72,369)
PI: Yifan Sun (lead institution lead PI), Katherine E. Isaacs (University of Utah)
3/2022 AMD ROCm and HIP Platform Development
AMD, Gift
$60,000 + 2x AMD MI100 GPU
Sole PI
2/2022 Exploring Interpretable Deep Learning from Information Theoretic Perspective: Modeling and Applications
Neocortex, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
Access to Cerebras Wafer-Scale Computing Devices
PI: Huajie Shao, Yifan Sun
12/2021 Developing Infrastructure for Advancing Research and Teaching in Security and Reliability
Coastal Virginia Center for Cyber Innovation (COVA CCI)
$79,670 for equipment shared by the department
PI: Dmitry Evtyushkin; Co-PI: Evgenia Smirni, Yifan Sun, Adwait Nadkarni
9/2021 AMD ROCm and HIP Platform Development
AMD, Gift
$40,000
Sole PI
4/2021 General-Purpose Computing with AMD Graphics Processors
AMD, Gift
$40,000
Sole PI

Publications

Conference Papers

33. (2025) Will Your Next Pair Programming Partner Be Human? An Empirical Evaluation of Generative AI as a Collaborative Teammate in a Semester-Long Classroom Setting
Wenhan Lyu, Yimeng Wang, Yifan Sun, Yixuan Zhang
12th ACM Conference on Learning at Scale (L@S 2025), 83-94.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3698205.3729544
Acceptance Rate: 18/84 (~21.4%)
32. (2025) NetCrafter: Tailoring Network Traffic for Non-Uniform Bandwidth Multi-GPU Systems
Amel Fatima, Yang Yang, Yifan Sun, Rachata Ausavarungnirun, Adwait Jog
52nd International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA 2025), 1064–1078.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3695053.3731040
Acceptance Rate: 132/570 (~23.2%)
31. (2025) The Sparsity-Aware LazyGPU Architecture
Changxi Liu, Miao Yu, Yifan Sun, Trevor E. Carlson
52nd International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA 2025), 1020–1034.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3695053.3731009
Acceptance Rate: 132/570 (~23.2%)
30. (2025) TrioSim: A Lightweight Simulator for Large-Scale DNN Workloads on Multi-GPU Systems
Ying Li, Yuhui Bao, Gongyu Wang, Xinxin Mei, Pranav Vaid, Anandaroop Ghosh, Adwait Jog, Darius Bunandar, Ajay Joshi, Yifan Sun
52nd International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA 2025), 1524–1538.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3695053.3731082
Acceptance Rate: 132/570 (~23.2%)
29. (2025) Luthier: A Dynamic Binary Instrumentation Framework Targeting AMD GPUs
Matin Raayai Ardakani, Andrew Nguyen, Ivan Rosales, Daoxuan Xu, Yuwei Sun, Yifan Sun, David Kaeli, Norm Rubin
2025 IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software (ISPASS 2025), 137–149.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ISPASS64960.2025.00022
Acceptance Rate: 28/99 (~28%)
28. (2024) Looking into the Black Box: Monitoring Computer Architecture Simulations in Real-Time with AkitaRTM
Ali Mosallaei, Katherine Isaacs, Yifan Sun
57th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO 2024)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/MICRO61859.2024.00063
Acceptance Rate: 113/489 (~22.7%)
27. (2024) Evaluating the Effectiveness of LLMs in Introductory Computer Science Education: A Semester-Long Field Study
Wenhan Lyu, Yimeng Wang, Tingting (Rachel) Chung, Yifan Sun, Yixuan Zhang
Eleventh ACM Conference on Learning at Scale (L@S 2024), 63–74.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3657604.3662036
Acceptance Rate: 22/90 (~24.4%)
26. (2024) Impact of Raindrops on Camera-Based Detection in Software-Defined Vehicles
Yichen Luo, Daoxuan Xu, Gang Zhou, Yifan Sun, Sidi Lu
2024 IEEE International Conference on Mobility, Operations, Services and Technologies (MOST 2024), 193–205.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/MOST60774.2024.00028
25. (2023) Path Forward Beyond Simulators: Fast and Accurate GPU Execution Time Prediction for DNN Workloads
Ying Li, Yifan Sun, Adwait Jog
56th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO 2023), 380–394.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3613424.3614277
Acceptance Rate: 101/424 (~23.8%)
24. (2023) Photon: A Fine-grained Sampled Simulation Methodology for GPU Workloads
Changxi Liu, Yifan Sun, Trevor E. Carlson
56th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO 2023), 1227–1241.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3613424.3623773
Acceptance Rate: 101/424 (~23.8%)
23. (2023) What Do We Mean When We Talk about Trust in Social Media? A Systematic Review
Yixuan Zhang, Joseph D Gaggiano, Nutchanon Yongsatianchot, Nurul M Suhaimi, Miso Kim, Yifan Sun, Jacqueline Griffin, and Andrea G Parker
2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2023), Article 670, 1–22.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581019
Acceptance Rate: 879/3182 (~27.6%)
22. (2023) Visualization Design Practices in a Crisis: Behind the Scenes with COVID-19 Dashboard Creators
Yixuan Zhang, Yifan Sun, Joseph D Gaggiano, Neha Kumar, Clio Maria Adris, and Andrea G Parker
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (IEEE VIS), 29(1), 1037–1047.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2022.3209493
Acceptance Rate: 122/460 (~26.5%)
21. (2022) NaviSim: A Highly Accurate GPU Simulator for AMD RDNA GPUs
Yuhui Bao, Yifan Sun, Zlatan Feric, Michael Tian Shen, Micah Weston, José L. Abellán, Trinayan Baruah, John Kim, Ajay Joshi, David Kaeli
International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques (PACT 2022), 333–345.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3559009.3569666
Acceptance Rate: 50/118 (~42.4%)
20. (2022) Shifting Trust: Examining How Trust and Distrust Emerge, Transform, and Collapse in COVID-19 Information Seeking
Yixuan Zhang, Nurul Suhaimi, Nutchanon Yongsatianchot, Joseph D Gaggiano, Miso Kim, Shivani A Patel, Yifan Sun, Stacy Marsella, Jacqueline Griffin, Andrea G Parker
2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2022), Article 78, 1–21.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3501889
Acceptance Rate: 638/2597 (~24.6%)
19. (2021) Daisen: A Framework for Visualizing Detailed GPU Execution
Yifan Sun, Yixuan Zhang, Ali Mosallaei, Michael D. Shah, Cody Dunne, David Kaeli
Eurographics Conference on Visualization (EuroVis 2021), 40(3), 239–250.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.14303
Acceptance Rate: 26.0%
18. (2021) Mapping the Landscape of COVID-19 Crisis Visualizations
Yixuan Zhang, Yifan Sun, Lace Padilla, Submit Barua, Enrico Bertini, Andrea G. Parker
2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2021), Article 608, 1–23.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445381
Acceptance Rate: ~26.3%
17. (2021) GNNMark: A Benchmark Suite to Characterize Graph Neural Network Training on GPUs
Trinayan Baruah, Kaustubh Shivdikar, Shi Dong, Yifan Sun, Saiful A. Mojumder, Kihoon Jung, José L. Abellán, Yash Ukidave, Ajay Joshi, John Kim, David Kaeli
2021 IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software (ISPASS 2021), 13–23.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ISPASS51385.2021.00013
Acceptance Rate: ~36.9%
16. (2020) Valkyrie: Leveraging Inter-TLB Locality to Enhance GPU Performance
Trinayan Baruah, Yifan Sun, Saiful A. Mojumder, José L. Abellán, Yash Ukidave, Ajay Joshi, Norman Rubin, John Kim, David Kaeli
ACM International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques (PACT 2020), 455–466.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3410463.3414639
Acceptance Rate: ~25.9%
15. (2020) Griffin: Hardware-Software Support for Efficient Page Migration in Multi-GPU Systems
Trinayan Baruah, Yifan Sun, Ali Tolga Dinçer, Saiful A. Mojumder, José L. Abellán, Yash Ukidave, Ajay Joshi, Norman Rubin, John Kim, David Kaeli
2020 IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA 2020), 596–609.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/HPCA47549.2020.00055
Acceptance Rate: ~19.4%
14. (2020) Introducing Gamettes: A Playful Approach for Capturing Decision-Making for Informing Behavioral Models
Omid Mohaddesi, Yifan Sun, Rana Azghandi, Rozhin Doroudi, Sam Snodgrass, Ozlem Ergun, Jacqueline Griffin, David Kaeli, Stacy Marsella, Casper Harteveld
2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2020), 1–13.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376571
Acceptance Rate: ~24.3%
13. (2019) MGPUSim: Enabling Multi-GPU Performance Modeling and Optimization
Yifan Sun, Trinayan Baruah, Saiful A. Mojumder, Shi Dong, Xiang Gong, Shane Treadway, Yuhui Bao, Spencer Hance, Carter McCardwell, Vincent Zhao, Harrison Barclay, Amir Kavyan Ziabari, Zhongliang Chen, Rafael Ubal, José L. Abellán, John Kim, Ajay Joshi, David Kaeli
46th International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA 2019), 197–209.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3307650.3322230
Acceptance Rate: 17.0%
12. (2019) Exploiting Adaptive Data Compression to Improve Performance and Energy-efficiency of Compute Workloads in Multi-GPU Systems
Mohammad Khavari Tavana, Yifan Sun, Nicolas Bohm Agostini, David Kaeli
2019 IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS 2019), 664–674.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/IPDPS.2019.00075
Acceptance Rate: ~27.7%
11. (2018) An Integrated Simulation Framework for Examining Resiliency in Pharmaceutical Supply Chains Considering Human Behaviors
Rozhin Doroudi, Rana Azghandi, Zlatan Feric, Omid Mohaddesi, Yifan Sun, Jacqueline Griffin, Ozlem Ergun, David Kaeli, Pedro Sequeira, Stacy Marsella, Casper Harteveld
2018 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC 2018), 88–99.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/WSC.2018.8632387
Acceptance Rate: ~70.4%
10. (2018) Profiling DNN Workloads on a Volta-based DGX-1 System
Saiful A Mojumder, Marcia S Louis, Yifan Sun, Amir Kavyan Ziabari, José L Abellán, John Kim, David Kaeli, Ajay Joshi
2018 IEEE International Symposium on Workload Characterization (IISWC 2018), 122–133.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/IISWC.2018.8573521
Acceptance Rate: ~36.2%
9. (2018) Characterizing the Microarchitectural Implications of a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) on GPUs
Shi Dong, Gong Xiang, Yifan Sun, Trinayan Baruah, David Kaeli
2018 ACM/SPEC International Conference on Performance Engineering (ICPE 2018), 96–106.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3184407.3184423
Acceptance Rate: 24.0%
8. (2018) Evaluating Performance Tradeoffs on the Radeon Open Compute Platform
Yifan Sun, Saoni Mukherjee, Trinayan Baruah, Shi Dong, Julian Gutierrez, Prannory Mohan, David Kaeli
2018 IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software (ISPASS 2018), 209–218.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ISPASS.2018.00034
Acceptance Rate: ~31.3%
7. (2018) Airavat: Improving Energy Efficiency of Heterogeneous Applications
Trinayan Baruah, Yifan Sun, Shi Dong, David Kaeli, Norm Rubin
2018 Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference & Exhibition (DATE 2018), 731–736.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.23919/DATE.2018.8342104
Acceptance Rate: ~24.2%
6. (2017) Moka: Model-based Concurrent Kernel Analysis
Leiming Yu, Xun Gong, Yifan Sun, Qianqian Fang, Norm Rubin, David Kaeli
2017 IEEE International Symposium on Workload Characterization (IISWC 2017)
5. (2016) Comprehensive Performance Analysis of HSA and OpenCL 2.0
Amir Kavyan Ziabari, Yifan Sun, Yenai Ma, Dana Schaa, Jose L. Abellan, John Kim, Ajay Joshi, David Kaeli
2016 IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software (ISPASS 2016), 183–193.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ISPASS.2016.7482093
Acceptance Rate: ~35.1%
4. (2016) Hetero-Mark, A Benchmark Suite for CPU-GPU Collaborative Computing
Yifan Sun, Xiang Gong, Amir Kavyan Ziabari, Leiming Yu, Xiangyu Li, Saoni Mukherjee, Carter McCardwell, Alejandro Vilegas, David Kaeli
2016 IEEE International Symposium on Workload Characterization (IISWC 2016), 1–10.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/IISWC.2016.7581262
Acceptance Rate: ~30.4%
3. (2016) Modeling Player Decisions in a Supply Chain Game
Yifan Sun, Chisheng Liang, Steven Sutherland, Casper Harteveld, David Kaeli
2016 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG 2016), 1–8.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/CIG.2016.7860444
Acceptance Rate: unknown
2. (2013) A Hybrid MAC Protocol with Channel-Dependent Optimized Scheduling for Clustered Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks
Jithin Jagannath, Anu Saji, Hovannes Kulhandjian, Yifan Sun, Emrecan Demirors, Tommaso Melodia
8th International Conference on Underwater Networks & Systems (WUWNet 2013), Article 3, 1–8.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2532378.2532382
Acceptance Rate: 20.0%
1. (2013) The Internet underwater: An IP-compatible protocol stack for commercial undersea modems
Yifan Sun, Tommaso Melodia
8th International Conference on Underwater Networks & Systems (WUWNet 2013), Article 37, 1–8.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2532378.2532407
Acceptance Rate: 20.0%

Journal Articles

8. (2025) Understanding the Practices, Perceptions, and (Dis)Trust of Generative AI among Instructors: A Mixed-methods Study in the U.S. Higher Education
Wenhan Lyu, Shuang Zhang, Tingting (Rachel) Chung, Yifan Sun, Yixuan Zhang
Computers & Education: Artificial Intelligence (CEAI), 8 (2025), 100383.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeai.2025.100383
7. (2023) Visual Exploratory Analysis for Designing Large-Scale Network-on-Chip Architectures: A Domain Expert-Led Design Study
Shaoyu Wang (co-first author), Hang Yan (co-first author), Katherine E. Isaacs, Yifan Sun
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), 30(4), 1970–1983.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2023.3337173
6. (2021) Spartan: A Sparsity-Adaptive Framework to Accelerate Deep Neural Network Training on GPUs
Shi Dong, Yifan Sun, Nicolas Bohm Agostini, Elmira Karimi, Daniel Lowell, Jing Zhou, José Cano, José L. Abellán, David Kaeli
IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS), 32(10), 2448–2463.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/TPDS.2021.3067825
5. (2020) Effects of Trust-based Decision Making in Disrupted Supply Chains
Rozhin Doroudi, Pedro Sequeira, Stacy Marsella, Ozlem Ergun, Rana Azghandi, David Kaeli, Yifan Sun, Jacqueline Griffin
PLOS ONE, 15, 2 (February 2020), e0224761.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0224761
4. (2019) Priority-based PCIe scheduling for multi-tenant multi-GPU systems
Chen Li, Yifan Sun, Lingling Jin, Lingjie Xu, Zheng Cao, Pengfei Fan, David Kaeli, Sheng Ma, Yang Guo, Jun Yang
IEEE Computer Architecture Letters (IEEE CAL), 18(2), 157–160.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/LCA.2019.2955119
3. (2016) UMH: A Hardware-based Unified Memory Hierarchy for Systems with Multiple Discrete GPUs
Amir Kavyan Ziabari, Yifan Sun, Yenai Ma, Dana Schaa, Jose L. Abellan, Rafael Ubal, John Kim, Ajay Joshi, David Kaeli
ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization (TACO), 13, 4, Article 35 (December 2016), 25 pages.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2996190
2. (2015) Accessing Spectrum Databases using Interference Alignment in Vehicular Cognitive Radio Networks
Abdulla K Al-Ali, Yifan Sun, Marco Di Felice, Jarkko Paavola, Kaushik R Chowdhury
IEEE TRANSACTIONs on Vehicular Technology (IEEE TVT), 64(1), 263–272.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/TVT.2014.2318837
1. (2014) Enabling emergency communication through a cognitive radio vehicular network
Yifan Sun, Kaushik R Chowdhury
IEEE Communications Magazine (IEEE Commun. Mag.), 52, 10 (2014), 68–75.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/MCOM.2014.6917404

Workshop Papers

6. (2025) ACTA: Automatic Configuration of the Tensor Memory Accelerator for High-End GPUs.
Nicolás Meseguer, Yifan Sun, Michael Pellauer, José L. Abellán, Manuel E. Acacio
17th Workshop on General Purpose Processing Using GPU (GPGPU 2025)
5. (2025) Exploring the Wafer-Scale GPUs
Daoxuan Xu, Le Xu, Jie Ren, Yifan Sun
17th Workshop on General Purpose Processing Using GPUs (GPGPU 2025)
4. (2024) A Survey of Artificial Intelligence Approaches to Safety and Mission-Critical Systems
Chris Thames, Yifan Sun
24th Integrated Communications, Navigation and Surveillance Conference (ICNS 2024)
3. (2023) A Regression-based Model for End-to-End Latency Prediction for DNN Execution on GPUs
Ying Li, Yifan Sun, Adwait Jog
2023 IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software (ISPASS 2023)
2. (2023) TraceSim: a Lightweight Simulator for Large-Scale DNN Workloads on Multi-GPU Systems
Ying Li, Yuhui Bao, Pranav Vaid, Gongyu Wang, Adwait Jog, Darius Bunandar, Ajay Joshi, Yifan Sun
First Workshop on Computer Architecture Modeling and Simulation (CAMS 2023)
1. (2022) Understanding Wafer-Scale GPU Performance using an Architectural Simulator
Chris Thames, Hang Yan, Yifan Sun
14th Workshop on General Purpose Processing Using GPU (GPGPU 2022)

Books

2. (2025) Accelerated Computing with HIP, 2nd Edition
Yifan Sun, Sabila Al Jannat, Trinayan Baruah, David Kaeli
Self-published (Book), ISBN: 979-8218107444.
1. (2022) Accelerated Computing with HIP
Yifan Sun, Trinayan Baruah, David Kaeli
Self-published (Book), ISBN:979-8218107444.

Book Chapters

1. (2016) HSA Simulators
Shih‑Hao Hung, Thomas B. Jablin, Yifan Sun, Rafael Ubal, David Kaeli
Heterogeneous System Architecture: Practical Applications for Industry (Elsevier, 1st edition) (Book Chapter), A book chapter in Heterogeneous System Architecture: Practical Applications for Industry, 1st edition, Elsevier.

Book Translations

1. (2024) ВЫСОКОПРОИЗВОДИТЕЛЬНЫЕ ВЫЧИСЛЕНИЯ С ПОМОЩЬЮ HIP
Ифань Сун, Тринайан Баруа, Дэвид Каэли
Russian translation of Accelerated Computing with HIP (Supercomputing Education Series, Moscow University Press)

Patents

4. (2021) Intelligent data coordination for accelerated computing in cloud environment
Junping Zhao, Yifan Sun, Layne Peng, Jie Bao, Kun Wang
United States Patent Application (US Patent), Patent No. US 10,891,156, Filed Apr 26, 2017, Issued Jan 12, 2021.
3. (2019) Managing Access to a Resource Pool of Graphics Processing Units under Fine Grain Control
Yifan Sun, Layne Peng, Robert A Lincourt Jr, John Cardente, Junping Zhao
United States Patent Application (US Patent), Patent No. US 10,262,390, Filed Apr 14, 2017, Issued Jun 27, 2019.
2. (2019) Checkpointing for GPU-as-a-Service in Cloud Computing Environment
Zhao Junping, Layne Peng, Jie Bao, Kun Wang, Yifan Sun
United States Patent Application (US Patent), Patent No. US 10,275,851, Filed Apr 25, 2017, Issued Apr 30, 2019.
1. (2018) Queue-based GPU Virtualization and Management System
Yifan Sun, Layne Peng, Jr. Robert A. Lincourt, John Cardente, John S Harwood
United States Patent Application (US Patent), Patent No. US 10,109,030, Filed Dec 27, 2016, Issued Oct 23, 2018.

Preprints

4. (2020) Halcone: A Hardware-Level Timestamp-based Cache Coherence Scheme for Multi-gpu Systems
Saiful A Mojumder, Yifan Sun, Leila Delshadtehrani, Yenai Ma, Trinayan Baruah, José L Abellán, John Kim, David Kaeli, Ajay Joshi
arXiv, 2007.04292.
3. (2020) MGPU-TSM: A Multi-gpu System with Truly Shared Memory
Saiful A Mojumder, Yifan Sun, Leila Delshadtehrani, Yenai Ma, Trinayan Baruah, José L Abellán, John Kim, David Kaeli, Ajay Joshi
arXiv, 2008.02300.
2. (2019) Summarizing CPU and GPU Design Trends with Product Data
Yifan Sun, Nicolas Bohm Agostini, Dong Shi, David Kaeli
arXiv, 1911.11313.
1. (2018) MGSim+MGMark: A Framework for Multi-GPU System Research
Yifan Sun, Trinayan Baruah, Saiful A Mojumder, Shi Dong, Rafael Ubal, Xiang Gong, Shane Treadway, Yuhui Bao, Vincent Zhao, José L Abellán, John Kim, Ajay Joshi, David Kaeli
arXiv, 1811.02884.

Dissertations

1. (2020) Enabling Collaborative Heterogeneous Computing
Yifan Sun
Ph.D. Dissertation, Northeastern University, 2020.

Software & Datasets

The CHIP Dataset
https://chip-dataset.vercel.app
A dataset with 2185 CPUs and 2668 GPUs helping researchers understand semiconductor development trends.
Featured in FiveThirtyEight and 'Data Is Plural' newsletter.
874 Downloads
MGPUSim
https://github.com/sarchlab/mgpusim
A multi-GPU system simulator based on AMD GCN3 GPUs.
187 Stars on GitHub
Akita
https://github.com/sarchlab/akita
A high-flexibility, high-performance, parallel computer architecture simulation framework.
89 Stars on GitHub
Hetero-Mark
https://github.com/NUCAR-DEV/Hetero-Mark
A benchmark suite for CPU-GPU collaborative computing.
Drug Supply Chain Simulator
https://gitlab.com/syifan/crisp
A human-in-the-loop logistics simulator for the U.S. drug supply chain.
VistaLights
https://github.com/syifan/VistaLights
Strategic game for maritime traffic management and disaster relief.

Tutorials

5/2020 Exploring Multi-GPU Simulation and Visual Profiling with MGPUSim
With José L. Abellán, Trinayan Baruah, and David Kaeli. Tutorial at ISCA 2020
2/2020 Tutorial on the Akita Simulator Framework and MGPUSim
With Trinayan Baruah, Shi Dong, and David Kaeli. Tutorial at HPCA 2020
9/2016 Multi2Sim 5.0
Tutorial at IISWC 2016

Talks

11/2024 User-Friendly Tools in Akita 3.0
The 2nd Workshop on Computer Architecture Modeling and Simulation (CAMS '24)
10/2024 On the Human Side of Computer Architecture, Towards Explainable Architecture
North Carolina State University
2/2023 Towards Building Explainable Computer Architecture
Lehigh University
1/2021 MGPUSim: A One-Stop Solution for GPU Architecture Simulation
The 2020 International Conference on High Performance Computing & Simulation (HPCS '20)
7/2020 MGPUSim: A High-Flexibility, High-Performance, Multi-GPU Simulator
Alibaba
3/2020 Collaborative Heterogeneous Computing
William & Mary; University of California, Santa Cruz; University of Pittsburgh; University of Central Florida
7/2019 Research in the NUCAR Laboratory at Northeastern University
FutureWei. With David Kaeli
5/2019 MGSim: a Flexible High-Performance Simulator for Multi-GPU Systems
International Workshop on OpenCL (IWOCL)
5/2019 AKITA: A Go-Based Computer Architecture Simulator Framework
Google
2/2019 Enabling Multi-GPU High Performance Computing with Memory System Design
Lightning talk at Boston University Red Hat Collaboratory
8/2017 Benchmarking the New Unified Memory of CUDA 8
With Frank Zhao. GTC 2017, San Jose

Teaching

Teaching @ William & Mary

Fall 2025 CSCI432 - Web Programming
Senior undergraduate-level course
Spring 2025 CSCI654 - Advanced Computer Architecture
Graduate-level course; new course
Fall 2024 CSCI432 - Web Programming
Senior undergraduate-level course; new course
Spring 2024 CSCI780 - Data Visualization
Ph.D.-level course
Fall 2023 CSCI141 - Computational Problem Solving
Undergraduate Python programming course (1st-2nd year)
Redesigned the lab instruction materials that unifies the sections
Spring 2023 CSCI780 - Computer Architecture Modeling and Simulation
Ph.D.-level course
Fall 2022 CSCI141 - Computational Problem Solving
Undergraduate Python programming course (1st-2nd year)
Spring 2022 CSCI780 - Data Visualization
Ph.D.-level course; new course
Fall 2021 CSCI141 - Computational Problem Solving
Undergraduate Python programming course (1st-2nd year)
Spring 2021 CSCI780 - Topics in Computer Architecture
Ph.D.-level course; new course
Fall 2020 CSCI141 - Computational Problem Solving
Undergraduate Python programming course (1st-2nd year)

Teaching @ Northeastern University

Fall 2019 EECE2322 - Fundamental Digital Design and Computer Organization
Co-instructor with Dr. Pereira da Silva Aloizio
Intermediate-level undergraduate course (3rd year)
Spring 2018 EECE2560 - Fundamentals of Engineering Algorithms
Instructor
Intermediate-level undergraduate course (3rd year)
Course redesign with student learning score 4.7/5; instructor effectiveness 4.4/5
Fall 2017 EECE2160 - Embedded Design Enabling Robotics
Instructor
Intermediate-level undergraduate course (2nd year)
Instructor effectiveness 4.6/5

Student Mentees

Ph.D. Students

2024 - Present Yijia Shi William & Mary
2024 - Present Enze Xu William & Mary
2023 - Present Daoxuan Xu William & Mary Co-advised with Jie Ren
2022 - Present Sabila Al Jannat William & Mary
2021 - Present Ying Li William & Mary
2020 - Present Chris Thames William & Mary Part-time, with full-time job at NASA

Master Researchers

2022 - 2023 Daoxuan Xu University of Florida
2018 - 2020 Yuhui Bao Northeastern University

Undergraduate Researchers

William & Mary
Zhuoyan Zheng, Mengyang He, Pablo Ibarz, Aibo Li, Yexi Zheng, Xuzhong Wang, Huizhi Zhao, Jeremy Coonley
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Ali Mosallaei
Huazhong University of Science & Technology (China)
Shaoyu Wang, Hang Yan, Chen Gong
Istanbul Technical University (Turkey)
Ali Tolga Dinçer
Northeastern University
Xin Li (REU Student)

Selected Media Coverage

2025 William & Mary News
William & Mary professor wins NSF CAREER award to study computer chip performance; Sun brings human-centered approach to computer architecture
2023 William & Mary News
Books published by William & Mary faculty in 2023
2022 FiveThirtyEight
The Datasets We're Looking At This Week (CHIP dataset highlighted by the 'Data Is Plural' column)
2022 William & Mary News
Misinformation examination: How trust and distrust shift during COVID-19
2021 WYDaily
W&M Professor Helps Medical Experts Study COVID-19 With GPUs
2021 William & Mary News
Sun is Teaching COVID-19 Researchers How to Use High-Performance AMD Computers
2019 HiPEAC info 58
MGPUSim announced at ISCA 2019
2019 News@Northeastern College of Engineering
Yifan Sun and NUCAR Research Lab featured in HiPEAC News
2013 WIRED
Finally, the Underwater We've All Been Waiting For
2013 NBC News
Deep-sea Internet to Detect Tsunamis, Spy on Smugglers, and Discover Oil

Service to the Profession

Ph.D. Dissertation Committee

William & Mary Lishan Yang
Defended Spring 2022 Joined GMU as Assistant Professor
Northeastern University Yuhui Bao
First Job @ AMD Inc.
Northeastern University Matin Raayai

Master Thesis Committee

William & Mary Jiangtao Kong
Defended Spring 2023 Continued Ph.D. study at William & Mary

Professional Organization Participation

2025 - Present Member
Technical Community on Microprogramming and Microarchitecture (TCuARCH)

Conference Organization

2025 Local Organization Chair
The 17th NASA Formal Methods Symposium (NFM '25)
2025 Artifact Evaluation Chair
2025 IEEE International Symposium on Workload Characterization (IISWC '25)
2023 Workshop/Tutorial Chair
IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA '23)

Workshop Chairing

2025 Chair 17th Workshop on General Purpose Processing Using GPU (GPGPU '25)
2024 Chair 2nd Workshop on Computer Architecture Modeling and Simulation (CAMS '24)
2024 Chair 16th Workshop on General Purpose Processing Using GPU (GPGPU '24)
2023 Chair 1st Workshop on Computer Architecture Modeling and Simulation (CAMS '23)
2023 Chair 15th Workshop on General Purpose Processing Using GPU (GPGPU '23)
2022 Chair 14th Workshop on General Purpose Processing Using GPU (GPGPU '22)
2016 Web Chair 6th Workshop on General Purpose Processing Using GPU (GPGPU '16)

Funding Agency Panelist

2025 DOE Panelist
Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR), Early Career Research Program (ECRP)
2022 NSF Panelist
NSF Cyberinfrastructure for Sustained Scientific Innovation (CSSI), Element

Program Committee

2025 HPCA '25 31st IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture
2024 CF '24 21st ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers
2024 HPCA '24 30th IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture
2024 AccML '24 6th Workshop on Accelerated Machine Learning
2024 ICCD '24 42nd IEEE International Conference on Computer Design
2023 ICCD '23 41st IEEE International Conference on Computer Design
2023 CF '23 20th ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers
2023 AccML '23 5th Workshop on Accelerated Machine Learning
2023 HPCA '23 IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture
2022 SBAC-PAD '22 International Symposium on Computer Architecture and High Performance Computing
2022 ICCD '22 40th IEEE International Conference on Computer Design
2022 AccML '22 4th Workshop on Accelerated Machine Learning
2021 SBAC-PAD '21 IEEE International Symposium on Computer Architecture and High Performance Computing
2021 ICCD '21 40th IEEE International Conference on Computer Design
2020 ICCD '20 39th IEEE International Conference on Computer Design
2020 GPGPU '20 13th Workshop on General Purpose Processing Using GPU

Journal Reviewer

2025 FGCS Future Generation Computer Systems
2025 TACO X3 ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization
2024 TCC IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing
2023 JPDC Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing
2023 TACO ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization
2022 TOMPECS ACM Transactions on Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Computing Systems
2022 TACO ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization
2022 FGCS Future Generation Computer Systems
2022 TPDS IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
2022 IEEE Micro
2021 TPDS IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
2021 TACO ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization
2021 CAL IEEE Computer Architecture Letters
2020 JPDC Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing
2020 TPDS IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
2020 TOC IEEE Transactions on Computers
2020 TACO ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization

External Review Committee / Ad-hoc Reviewer

2025 ISPASS '25 IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software
2024 ISCA '24 International Symposium on Computer Architecture (External Review Committee)
2024 PacificVis '24 IEEE Pacific Visualization Symposium (Ad-hoc Reviewer)

Service to William & Mary

Event Organization

6/11/2025 Local Organization Chair
The 17th NASA Formal Methods Symposium (NFM '25)
Secured $8,000+ in sponsorship funding from William & Mary CS Department, School of Arts & Sciences, and Provost's Office
Coordinated full conference logistics including venue, AV infrastructure, parking, and hospitality services for attendees
Room Tidewater at Saddler Center, William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA
11/9/2024 Chair
The 3rd William & Mary Computer Science Symposium for Graduate Studies

William & Mary Undergraduate Advising

2025 - 2026 Pre-Major Advisor 7 students
2024 - 2025 Pre-Major Advisor 7 students
2023 - 2024 CS Major Advisor 4 students
2023 - 2024 Pre-Major Advisor 8 students
2022 - 2023 CS Major Advisor 2 students
2022 - 2023 Pre-Major Advisor 10 students
2021 - 2022 Pre-Major Advisor 6 students

William & Mary University-Wide Committee

2023 - 2024 Member Generative AI University Teaching & Learning Project (UTLP)
2022 - 2023 Member S. Laurie Sanderson Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Mentoring Committee
2022 - 2023 Member Research Computing Advisory Committee
2021 - 2022 Member S. Laurie Sanderson Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Mentoring Committee

William & Mary Department-Level Committee

2025 - 2026 Member Computer Science Undergraduate Curriculum
2025 - 2026 Member Computer Science Web Presence
2024 - 2025 Chair Computer Science Graduate Recruiting
2024 - 2025 Member Computer Science Web Presence
2024 - 2025 Member Computer Science Colloquium
2023 - 2024 Member Computer Science Graduate Recruiting
2023 - 2024 Member Computer Science Web Presence
2023 - 2024 Member Computer Science Colloquium
2022 - 2023 Chair Computer Science Web Presence
2022 - 2023 Member Data Science Faculty Recruitment
2022 - 2023 Member Computer Science Colloquium
2022 - 2023 Chair Computer Science Graduate Admission
2022 - 2023 Member Computer Science Graduate Recruiting
2022 - 2023 Member Computer Science System
2021 - 2022 Member Computer Science Web Presence
2021 - 2022 Member Computer Science Curriculum