Nic McDonald

Software and Hardware Engineer

Nvidia

Biography

I am a computer architecture research scientist and software/hardware engineer. I am a senior research scientist at Nvidia Research working on next generation hardware and software systems for Nvidia networks.

Interests

Computer Architecture
Software Engineering
Interconnection Networks
High Performance Computing
Simulation and Modeling
Embedded Systems
Artificial Intelligence
Algorithmic Trading

Education

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, 2016

Stanford University
M.S. in Electrical Engineering, 2012

University of Utah
B.S. in Computer Engineering, 2010

University of Utah

Projects

libdes

A parallel discrete event simulation framework.

ParaMgmt

A parallel SSH-based remote machine management system.

TaskRun

An easy-to-use python package for parallel task execution.

SuperSim

A flit-level interconnection network simulator.

DevSearch

A project development find and goto system.

Publications

Practical and Efficient Incremental Adaptive Routing for HyperX Networks

We present two practical and efficient incremental adaptive routing algorithms for HyperX.

Nic McDonald, Mikhail Isaev, Adriana Flores, Al Davis, John Kim

PDF Slides DOI

SuperSim: Extensible Flit-Level Simulation of Large-Scale Interconnection Networks

We present SuperSim, an open-source flit-level interconnection network simulator for large-scale high-performance networks.

Nic McDonald, Adriana Flores, Al Davis, Mikhail Isaev, John Kim, Doug Gibson

PDF Project Slides DOI

High-Performance Service-Oriented Computing

This dissertation presents Sikker, a highly-scalable high-performance distributed system architecture for secure service-oriented …

Nic McDonald, Bill Dally

PDF Slides

Experience

Senior Research Scientist

Nvidia

Feb 2021 – Present Salt Lake City, Utah

I work in the network research group at Nvidia Research.

Senior Software Engineer

Google

Jan 2019 – Jan 2021 Sunnyvale, California

I worked in the system infrastructure team specifically on tightly-coupled high-performance network technologies covering topologies, routing algorithms, network acceleration and offloading, congestion control, processing architectures, and more.

Research Scientist

Hewlett Packard Labs

Jan 2016 – Dec 2018 Fort Collins, Colorado

I was a lead architect on design of a new high-performance network designed for large-scale high-performance computing (HPC) systems and massively parallel memory-driven computing (MDC) systems. I was the key designer of the Gen-Z routing architectural specification. Using a data-driven simulation approach I guided the design of a novel multi-chip module (MCM) switch architecture that utilizes co-packaged integrated photonics.

Digital Hardware Design Engineer

L3 Communications

Aug 2008 – Sep 2012 Salt Lake City, Utah

Developed digital processing architectures for encryption, networking, and waveform data processing. Designed systems with strict requirements for high-performance, low-power, and low-area. All designs were meticulously scrutinized for high-reliability and signal integrity.