Kunle Olukotun

Kunle Olukotun is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University's School of Engineering, where he has been faculty since 1991. He directs the Stanford Pervasive Parallelism Lab (PPL) and co-leads the Transactional Coherence and Consistency (TCC) project.

His research focuses on computer architecture, parallel programming environments, and scalable parallel systems. Key areas include chip multiprocessors (CMPs), transactional memory systems, domain-specific languages (DSLs) for heterogeneous computing, and hardware-software co-design for machine learning workloads. His work bridges theoretical foundations with practical systems implementation.

Notable contributions include the Stanford Hydra research project (one of the first chip multiprocessors with thread-level speculation), founding Afara Websystems (acquired by Sun Microsystems), and developing the Niagara processor architecture. His DSL frameworks like Green-Marl and Spatial enable efficient graph analysis and hardware acceleration.

His publications reveal strong trends in parallel systems evolution: from foundational CMP research (2000s) to transactional memory (2004-2010), then DSLs for heterogeneous computing (2010-2015), and currently foundation model systems (2023-2025). Subfield analysis shows consistent focus on hardware-software co-design, sparse computation, and compiler techniques across decades.

• ACM Fellow (2006) for contributions to multiprocessors on a chip and multi-threaded processor design
• Best Paper Award at IEEE International Symposium on Workload Characteristics (IISWC '10) for EigenBench

Olukotun actively mentors researchers through the Stanford Pervasive Parallelism Lab (PPL), which seeks to proliferate parallelism across application domains. His projects have secured significant industry partnerships, including the acquisition of his startup Afara Websystems by Sun Microsystems. Current research focuses on compiler frameworks for foundation model systems and hardware acceleration for sparse machine learning workloads, supported by collaborations with major tech companies.

He leads the Stanford Pervasive Parallelism Lab (PPL), which develops compiler and runtime systems for heterogeneous architectures. The lab's work spans DSLs, hardware acceleration, and parallel programming models, with strong industry ties to companies like NVIDIA and Google. Current initiatives include the Mosaic compiler framework and Stardust architecture for sparse tensor computation.