Yongmei Zhang

Advancing AI Hardware–Software Co-Design

About

I'm an engineering leader with deep roots in hardware and software architect. For decades I've worked across hardware and software stack, spanning ASIC design, UVM and formal verification, memory subsystems, interconnects, GPU schedulers, and datacenter-scale performance analysis.

Over the past year, I've focused on building a unified AI compute layer that enables high-performance inference across diverse hardware platforms. It brings together what I’ve spent my career doing: connecting hardware architecture, software, and system performance to make AI computing faster and more efficient.

I hold a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Tsinghua University and studied machine learning at Stanford. I write here about chip architecture, ML systems, and what it takes to build both.

Experience

  1. Oct 2025 — Present

    Director of Engineering

    Modular, a Qualcomm company

    Leading engineering on the unified AI compute layer — portable, high-performance AI software across diverse hardware.

  2. 2021 — 2025

    Principal GPU Architect

    NVIDIA

    Architectural optimization of the GPU hardware scheduler for system efficiency and reliability; time-distribution and time-precision analysis for datacenter GPUs; performance collaboration with CUDA driver and software teams.

  3. 2018 — 2021

    Interconnect Architect for Xeon Servers & SoC Bringup Manager

    Intel Corporation

    Architectural optimization and performance analysis for AI and datacenter workloads; data-flow modeling across design, DV, and performance teams; directed Xeon SoC bring-up.

  4. 2013 — 2018

    Design Verification / Modeling Architect

    LG Silicon Valley Lab

    Led verification and built a parallel-computing functional model for an AI hardware accelerator; developed last-level cache for ARM CPU/GPU memory subsystems.

  5. 2008 — 2013

    Design & Verification Consultant

    Cadence Design Systems

    Led UVM adoption at Qualcomm and delivered advanced verification methodology consulting and seminars to customers worldwide.

Education & Recognition

PhD, Electrical Engineering

Tsinghua University

Graduated with honors; Best Student Paper Award.

Machine Learning

Stanford University

Graduate study in machine learning and deep learning.

Patent

US20230086723A1 · 2023

“Selection of victim entry in a data structure.”

Kaggle Silver Medal

Text Normalization Challenge · 2017

Ranked in the top 17% worldwide.

Writing

Notes on AI hardware–software co-design, chip architecture, and engineering leadership.

First posts coming soon.

Visit the blog →

Contact

The best way to reach me is LinkedIn — I read every message.

Connect on LinkedIn