Mahbod Afarin
I am a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science and a member of the RIPLE research group at the University of California, Riverside, being advised by Professor Rajiv Gupta and Professor Nael Abu-Ghazaleh. I am working on the GRASP project in the Computer Architecture and Programming Systems (GRASP) Lab. Prior to joining UCR, I received my master's degree in Computer Architecture from Sharif University of Technology under the supervision of Professor Shaahin Hessabi in 2018, and my bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from Shahed University under the supervision of Professor Naser Mohammadzadeh in 2015. [CV] [Google Scholar]
Aug. 2023 | Our paper, "Core Graph: Exploiting Edge Centrality to Speedup the Evaluation of Iterative Graph Queries" has been accepted for presentation in Proceedings of the Nineteen European Conference on Computer Systems (EuroSys'24), Athens, Greece. |
Jul. 2023 | Our paper, "MEGA Evolving Graph Accelerator" has been accepted for presentation in 56th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO'23), Toronto, Canada. |
Jun. 2023 | Received Conference Travel Grants from UCR GSA. See you in Orlando! |
May. 2023 | Our paper, "CommonGraph: Graph Analytics on Evolving Data (Abstract)" has been accepted for presentation in the Highlights of Parallel Computing (HOPC'23), Orlando, Florida. |
Sept. 2022 | Our paper, "CommonGraph: Graph Analytics on Evolving Data" has been accepted for presentation in 28th ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS'23), Vancouver, Canada. |
Oct. 2021 | I successfully defended my Oral Qualifying Exam. Ph.D. candidate now! |
July 2021 | Our paper, "JetStream: Graph Analytics on Streaming Data with Event-Driven Hardware Accelerator" has been accepted for presentation in 54th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO'21), Athens, Greece. |
Research
Hardware Accelerators:
JetStream (MICRO'21): Event-Driven Hardware Accelerator for Streaming Graph Analytics
Jun' 20 - Apr' 21
University of California, Riverside, California, USA
- First Streaming Graph Accelerator: Developed JetStream, the first accelerator to support operations on streaming graphs (or dynamic graphs).
- New Asynchronous Streaming Algorithms: JetStream subsumes the capabilities of GraphBolt and KickStarter software frameworks that allow edge deletions.
- Large Performance Improvements that improve with smaller batch sizes: JetStream substantially outperforms both software frameworks. In addition, its advantage grows as the batch size is reduced, making it suitable for near real-time analytics.
MEGA (MICRO'23): MEGA Evolving Graph Accelerator
Jun' 22 - May' 23
University of California, Riverside, California, USA
- First Evolving Graph Accelerator: MEGA, the first accelerator for evolving graph workloads, provides support for multiple snapshots executing simultaneously.
- Batch-Oriented Execution:: Batch-oriented execution exploits the similarity of the graph across snapshots to reuse similar edge-fetches and minimize redundant execution of batches.
- Batch Pipelining:: We explore optimizations to the workflow to improve concurrency such as allowing multiple concurrent batches, and using pipelining across batches.
Graph Analytics on Evolving Data:
CommonGraph (ASPLOS'23): Graph Analytics on Evolving Data
Aug' 21 - Jun' 22
University of California, Riverside, California, USA
- Converting Expensive Deletions to Additions: Developed a new approach to evolving graphs analysis that avoids processing of deletions by converting them to additions to the CommonGraph. CommonGraph facilitates work sharing and parallelism across snapshots.
- Triangular Grid Data Structure for Direct-Hop and Work-Sharing Algorithm:
- Developed a new structure called Triangular Grid that exposes work-sharing opportunities across snapshots. A Steiner Tree formulation finds a solution that maximizes work-sharing.
- Designed a graph representation that avoids the need to mutate graphs and enables reuse of edges by snapshots that share them.
- Implemented the CommonGraph that exploits the above ideas and delivers considerable speedups over KickStarter.
Graph Algorithms:
Core Graph (EuroSys'24): Exploiting Edge Centrality to Speedup the Evaluation of Iterative Graph Queries
May' 21 - May' 23
University of California, Riverside, California, USA
- Core Graph Identification and Exploitation:
- Our study of multiple kinds of graph queries on irregular graphs shows that the solution of a query is determined by a small fraction of total edges, i.e. critical edges. Also, many edges recur frequently across critical edge sets of different queries.
- Present algorithms for finding a core graph by solving a small set of queries to identify most non-zero centrality edges.
- Exploit core graph and present a new optimization that improves the efficiency of the 2phase evaluation while producing 100\% precise results.
- Experimental Results: For the 2.586 billion Friendster graph, across six kinds of queries, our approach yielded core graphs containing 5.42% to 10.45% edges and precise results for 97.1 - 99.9% vertices.
Resume
Please download my resume from Here.
Education
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Computer Science
Jan' 20 - Jun' 24 (Expected)
University of California, Riverside, California, USA
Thesis: "Hardware-Software Approaches for Accelerating Graph Processing Workloads"
Advisors: Professor Rajiv Gupta & Professor Nael Abu-Ghazaleh
GPA: 3.86/4
Master of Science (M.Sc.), Computer Engineering (Computer System Architecture)
Sep' 15 - Jan' 18
Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
Thesis: "Improving Manufacturing Yield and Life Cycle of Special Purpose SIMT Processors for Inexact Computing" (Thesis Grade: Excellent)
Advisors: Professor Shaahin Hessab
GPA: 4/4 (19.03/20) - Ranked 7th in terms of total GPA among 83 Computer Engineering students (Top 8%)
Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.), Computer Engineering (Computer System Architecture)
Sep' 11 - Jun' 15
Shahed University, Tehran, Iran
Thesis: "Comparing different types of software for designing with SystemC and implementing Mano processor with SystemC" (Thesis Grade: Excellent)
Advisors: Professor Naser Mohammadzadeh
GPA: 3.63/4 (17.53/20) - Ranked 1st among all Computer Engineering graduate students
Publications
EuroSys'24 | Xiaolin Jiang, Mahbod Afarin, Zhijia Zhao, Nael Abu-Ghazaleh, Rajiv Gupta, “ Core Graph: Exploiting Edge Centrality to Speedup the Evaluation of Iterative Graph Queries ,” 2024 Proceedings of the Nineteen European Conference on Computer Systems (EuroSys'24) (Contributed Equally with the First Author). |
MICRO’23 | Chao Gao, Mahbod Afarin, Shafiur Rahman, Nael Abu-Ghazaleh, Rajiv Gupta, “ MEGA Evolving Graph Accelerator ,” 2023 56th Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO'23) (Contributed Equally with the First Author). |
HOPC'23 |
Mahbod Afarin, Chao Gao, Shafiur Rahman, Nael Abu-Ghazaleh, Rajiv Gupta, “ CommonGraph: Graph Analytics on Evolving Data (Abstract) ,” Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Workshop on Highlights of Parallel Computing (HOPC'23). [PDF] [DOI] |
ASPLOS'23 |
Mahbod Afarin, Chao Gao, Shafiur Rahman, Nael Abu-Ghazaleh, Rajiv Gupta, “ CommonGraph: Graph Analytics on Evolving Data ,” International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS'23). [PDF] [Video] [Slides] [Poster] [DOI] [Lightening Talk] [Cite] |
MICRO’21 | Shafiur Rahman, Mahbod Afarin, Nael Abu-Ghazaleh, Rajiv Gupta, “ JetStream: Graph Analytics on Streaming Data with Event-Driven Hardware Accelerator ,” 2021 54th Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO'21). [PDF] [Slides] [DOI] [Cite] |
Teaching
Summer'23 | Teaching Assistant, Compiler Design, University of California, Riverside, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Prof. Rajiv Gupta. |
Summer'22 | Teaching Assistant, Compiler Design, University of California, Riverside, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Prof. Rajiv Gupta. |
Spring'22 | Teaching Assistant, Compiler Design, University of California, Riverside, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Prof. Rajiv Gupta. |
Summer'21 | Teaching Assistant, Compiler Design, University of California, Riverside, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Prof. Rajiv Gupta. |
Spring'21 | Teaching Assistant, Compiler Design, University of California, Riverside, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Prof. Rajiv Gupta. |
Spring'18 | Teaching Assistant, System on Chip (Graduate), Sharif University of Technology, Department of Computer Engineering, Prof. Shaahin Hessabi. |
Fall'17 | Teaching Assistant, Testability (Graduate), Sharif University of Technology, Department of Computer Engineering, Prof. Shaahin Hessabi. |
Summer'17 | Lab Instructor, Logic Design Lab, Sharif University of Technology, Department of Computer Engineering, Prof. Siavash Bayat-Sarmadi. |
Spring'17 | Teaching Assistant, Advanced VLSI (Graduate), Sharif University of Technology, Department of Computer Engineering, Prof. Shaahin Hessabi. |
Fall'17 | Teaching Assistant, VLSI (Undergraduate), Sharif University of Technology, Department of Computer Engineering, Prof. Shaahin Hessabi. |
Summer'16 | Lab Instructor, Digital System Design Lab, Sharif University of Technology, Department of Computer Engineering, Prof. Maziar Goudarzi. |
Fall'19 | Teaching Assistant, VLSI Design (Undergraduate), Shahed University, Department of Computer Engineering, Prof. Naser Mohammadzadeh. |
Fall'19 | Teaching Assistant, Computer Architecture, Shahed University, Department of Computer Engineering, Prof. Naser Mohammadzadeh. |
Spring'19 | Teaching Assistant, Digital Electronic (Undergraduate), Shahed University, Department of Computer Engineering, Prof. Naser Mohammadzadeh. |
Spring'19 | Teaching Assistant, Computer Architecture, Shahed University, Department of Computer Engineering, Prof. Naser Mohammadzadeh. |
Spring'19 | Lab Instructor, Logic Design Lab, Shahed University, Department of Computer Engineering, Prof. Naser Mohammadzadeh. |
Spring'19 | Lab Instructor, Digital System Design Lab, Shahed University, Department of Computer Engineering, Prof. Naser Mohammadzadeh. |
Honors and Awards
June. 2023 | Won UCR GSA Travel Grant Award at University of California, Riverside, 2023. |
Octs. 2019 | Won Dean’s Distinguished Fellowship Award at University of California, Riverside, 2019. |
Jan. 2018 | Ranked 7th in terms of total GPA among 83 Computer Engineering students in Sharif University of Technology (Top 8%), 2018. |
Oct. 2015 | Admitted as an Exceptional Talent at Sharif University of Technology for M.Sc programs, 2015. |
Jun. 2015 | 1st Rank, Achievement of the highest GPA in B.Sc among all Computer Engineering graduated students in Shahed University, 2015. |