I am an Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science Departments at Carnegie Mellon University. My research bridges computer architecture and software systems, demonstrating the importance of that bridge in enabling efficient, sustainable, and impartial web systems via solutions that span the compute stack.
Modern computer systems are, unfortunately, mostly either in the hands of the privileged or on the ground as e-waste in under-developed communities. This reality is due to the fact that traditionally, systems and architecture research, especially related to large-scale data center systems, often adopt a "performance-first" approach to ensure quick responses. While high performance is indeed critical, this approach does not consider the ethical implications of system design, and consequently compromises key metrics like sustainability and impartiality. For example, service operators upgrade hardware every 3-5 years to improve performance, increasing the carbon footprint from hardware manufacturing, hurting sustainability. Hence, it is critical to redesign high-performance web systems in a socially-responsible way. My work redesigns the computing stack to enable sustainable and impartial web systems that also achieve high performance. My solutions have been deployed on real hyperscale systems and serve billions of users, saving millions of dollars, and reducing carbon emissions equivalent to those emitted by several countries. Additionally, my research has influenced the design of Intel’s Alder Lake (Golden Cove and future generation) CPU architectures, Intel’s Infrastructure Processing Unit, Mangoboost’s Data Processing Unit, Intel’s Data Streaming Accelerator, NVIDIA’s H100+ GPUs, and the ICC compiler. My research has been recognized with the 2026 IEEE CS TCCA Young Computer Architect Award, the 2026 CRA Anita Borg Early Career Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the 2025 Google ML and Systems Junior Faculty Award (inaugural recipient), the 2024 George Tallman Ladd Research Award, the 2023 Intel Rising Star Award, the 2023 CMU College of Engineering ``Moonshot: Initiatives to Institute'' Award, the 2022 Meta Systems Research Award, industry awards from Intel, Meta, VMWare, and Google, and two IEEE Micro Top Picks recognitions. I received my PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan. My dissertation research received the 2022 ACM SIGARCH and IEEE CS TCCA Outstanding Dissertation Award HM, the 2022 ACM SIGOPS Dennis M. Ritchie Doctoral Dissertation Award HM, the 2022 BenchCouncil Distinguished Dissertation Award, the 2021 David J. Kuck Dissertation Prize, and the 2021 ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award. During my PhD, I was awarded the 2020 Facebook Fellowship, 2020 ASPLOS Best Presentation Award, 2019 ASPLOS WACI Chair's Choice Award, and 2015 Rackham Merit PhD Fellowship. I was also named a 2020 Heidelberg Laureate and a 2019 Rising Star in EECS. Please note that this webpage represents only a snapshot of my research, teaching, mentorship, and service activities. Please refer to my CV for the latest details.PhD in Computer Science, 2021
University of Michigan
M.S. in Embedded Systems, 2015
University of Pennsylvania
My group rethinks the entire compute stack to enable sustainable and impartial hyperscale systems. Click a stack layer on the left of the image to see papers relevant to that layer.
Jaylen Wang, Daniel S. Berger, Fiodar Kazhamiaka, Celine Irvene, Chaojie Zhang, Esha Choukse, Kali Frost, Rodrigo Fonseca, Brijesh Warrier, Chetan Bansal, Jonathan Stern, Ricardo Bianchini, Akshitha Sriraman. International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), June 2024
- Recognized as an IEEE Micro Top Pick paper (awarded to the top 12 computer architecture papers of 2024)
- ACM Badges: Artifact Available, Evaluated, and Reproduced
- Evaluated under hyperscale cloud production constraints to save about 1% of global carbon emissions (equivalent to eliminating annual emissions from entire countries like Nigeria/Kuwait)
- Featured in Carnegie Mellon University News, IEEE Spectrum, MSN News, Yahoo News, TechXplore, Knowridge, CelebrityGig, and many more (too lazy to list them all)
Shixin Song, Tanvir Ahmed Khan, Sara Mahdizadeh-Shahri, Akshitha Sriraman, Niranjan K Soundararajan, Sreenivas Subramoney, Daniel A Jiminez, Heiner Litz, Baris Kasikci. International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), June 2022
Tanvir Ahmed Khan, Nathan Brown, Akshitha Sriraman, Niranjan K Soundararajan, Rakesh Kumar, Joseph Devietti, Sreenivas Subramoney, Gilles A Pokam, Heiner Litz, Baris Kasikci. International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO), Oct 2021
Tanvir Ahmed Khan, Dexin Zhang, Akshitha Sriraman, Joseph Devietti, Gilles A Pokam, Heiner Litz, Baris Kasikci. International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), June 2021
Tanvir Ahmed Khan, Akshitha Sriraman, Joseph Devietti, Gilles A Pokam, Heiner Litz, Baris Kasikci. International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO), Oct 2020
Akshitha Sriraman, Abhishek Dhanotia. International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS), Mar 2020
Selected as an IEEE Micro Top Pick paper (awarded to the top 12 architecture papers of 2020)
Best Presentation Award
ACM Badges: Artifacts Available and Artifacts Evaluated & Functional
Influenced Intel's Infrastructure Processing Unit
Featured by TechXplore, Debuglies News, Michigan News, and Facebook Engineering
Akshitha Sriraman, Abhishek Dhanotia, Thomas F. Wenisch. International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), June 2019
Deployed across a real global data center fleet
Influenced Intel's Alder Lake servers (Golden cove microarchitecture and beyond)
Featured by Facebook Engineering and Real World Technologies
Amirhossein Mirhosseini, Akshitha Sriraman, Thomas F. Wenisch. International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA), Feb 2019
Akshitha Sriraman, Thomas F. Wenisch. USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), Oct 2018
Akshitha Sriraman, Thomas F. Wenisch. IEEE International Symposium on Workload Characterization (IISWC), Oct 2018
Liang Luo, Akshitha Sriraman, Brooke Fugate, Shiliang Hu, Gilles Pokam, Chris J. Newburn, and Joseph Devietti. International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA), Feb 2016
Andrew A. Chien, Udit Gupta, Shaolei Ren, Akshitha Sriraman, Bill Tomlinson. Nature Reviews Clean Technology, July 2026
Jaylen Wang, Daniel S. Berger, Fiodar Kazhamiaka, Celine Irvene, Chaojie Zhang, Esha Choukse, Kali Frost, Rodrigo Fonseca, Brijesh Warrier, Chetan Bansal, Jonathan Stern, Ricardo Bianchini, Akshitha Sriraman. IEEE Micro, July 2025
Deepanjali Mishra, Konstantinos Kanellopoulos, Ashish Panwar, Akshitha Sriraman, Vivek Seshadri, Onur Mutlu, Todd C. Mowry. IEEE Computer Architecture Letters (CAL), Jan 2024
Pratyush Patel, Zibo Gong, Syeda Rizvi, Esha Choukse, Pulkit Misra, Thomas Anderson, Akshitha Sriraman. IEEE Computer Architecture Letters (CAL), July 2023
Akshitha Sriraman, Abhishek Dhanotia. IEEE Micro (Top Picks Issue), May 2020
Featured by TechXplore, Debuglies News, Michigan News, and Facebook Engineering
Would you like to be a part of our adventures?
I am always looking for highly-motivated students! Due to the volume of email I receive, I am unable to reply to each prospective student individually. If you are applying to the PhD program at CMU ECE or CS, please mention my name in your application and I will take a look.
Admissions I am often asked whether a profile is strong enough to be admitted. I am unable to comment on this: PhD admissions are evaluated holistically by a committee, not by me individually. If the application fee is what's holding you back, note that you may qualify for an application fee waiver for the CMU ECE PhD application.
Fellowships If you are a US citizen from an underrepresented group or a first-gen college student, consider applying for the GEM Fellowship (deadline mid-November) and the CMU Rales Fellowship.
Already at CMU? Email me your CV, your transcript, and some critical thoughts on why you are interested in working with me.
New to this? My colleague Prof. Mor Harchol-Balter's guide to applying to PhD programs is an excellent resource on what a PhD involves and how to apply.