Yifan Qin

Yifan Qin

PhD candidate in department of computer science engineering

About

I am a 3rd-year PhD candidate from Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Notre Dame. My research interest includes efficient and robust AI, software/hardware codesign, AI accelerator, and efficient LLM. Now I am very fortunate to work with Prof. Yiyu Shi and Prof. X. Sharon Hu, University of Notre Dame. Before my PhD study, I received BS and MS degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

You can find my CV here.

Feel free to contact me if you have any idea or project to share, email: yqin3 [at] nd [dot] edu.

News

  • ISSCC Our paper is accepted by ISSCC 2025 ! A 65nm Uncertainty-quantifiable Ventricular Arrhythmia Detection Engine with 1.75μJ per Inference
  • ICCAD Our paper is selected as the Best Paper Candidate in ICCAD 2024 ! Towards Uncertainty-Quantifiable Biomedical Intelligence: Mixed-signal Compute-in-Entropy for Bayesian Neural Networks
  • ASP-DAC Our paper is accepted by ASP-DAC 2025 ! A 10.60 μW 150 GOPS Mixed-Bit-Width Sparse CNN Accelerator for Life-Threatening Ventricular Arrhythmia Detection
  • ICCAD Our paper is accepted by ICCAD 2024 ! TSB: Tiny Shared Block for Efficient DNN Deployment on NVCIM Accelerators
  • ICCAD Our paper is accepted by ICCAD 2024 ! Towards Uncertainty-Quantifiable Biomedical Intelligence: Mixed-signal Compute-in-Entropy for Bayesian Neural Networks
  • 🎉️I give a talk on ACCESS summer school !
  • 🎉️Our poster is on ACCESS Techonlogy Symposium !
  • ICCAD Our paper is selected as the Best Paper in ICCAD 2023 ! Improving realistic worst-case performance of NVCiM DNN accelerators through training with right-censored gaussian noise
  • AIS Our paper is accepted by Advanced Intelligent Systems and selected as Back Cover ! Recent progress on memristive convolutional neural networks for edge intelligence
  • TED Our paper is accepted by IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices ! Design of high robustness BNN inference accelerator based on binary memristors

Talks

  • A talk is given in Computer science department, Shandong University (SDU), Aug 2024.
  • A talk is given in Electrical engineering department, Zhejiang University (ZJU), Aug 2024.
  • A talk is given in University of Michigan – Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), Aug 2024.
  • A talk is given in Electrical engineering department, Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), July 2024.
  • A talk is given in AI Chip Center for Emerging Smart Systems (ACCESS), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), June 2024.

talk

Research Experiences

  • AI Chip Intern
    AI Chip Center for Emerging Smart Systems (ACCESS)
    Hong Kong University of Science and Technology | May 2024 - July 2024
    • CNN-based arrhythmia detection accelerator
    • Achieved 150 GOPS/W energy efficiency
    • Led full-stack optimization from algorithm to chip implementation
  • Research Assistant
    Huazhong University of Science and Technology | Aug 2018 - Jun 2022
    • Memristor-based AI accelerator design
    • Published 2 first-author papers (one backcover)
    • Developed robustness enhancement techniques

Publications

Journal

  1. Yifan Qin, Zheyu Yan, Dailin Gan, Jun Xia, Zixuan Pan, Wujie Wen, Xiaobo Sharon Hu, and Yiyu Shi. “NeFT: Negative Feedback Training to Improve Robustness of Compute-In-Memory DNN Accelerators”. In: IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems (TCAD) (2025). (under review).

  2. Han Bao, Yifan Qin, Jia Chen, Ling Yang, Jiancong Li, Houji Zhou, Yi Li, and Xiangshui Miao. “Quantization and sparsity-aware processing for energy-efficient NVM-based convolutional neural networks”. In: Frontiers in Electronics 3 (2022), p. 954661.

  3. Yifan Qin, Han Bao, Feng Wang, Jia Chen, Yi Li, and Xiangshui Miao. “Recent progress on memristive convolutional neural networks for edge intelligence”. In: Advanced Intelligent Systems 2.11 (2020), p. 2000114. (Back Cover).

  4. Yifan Qin, Rui Kuang, Xiaodi Huang, Yi Li, Jia Chen, and Xiangshui Miao. “Design of high robustness BNN inference accelerator based on binary memristors”. In: IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices 67.8 (2020), pp. 3435–3441.

Conference

  1. Yifan Qin, Zhenge Jia, Zheyu Yan, Jay Mok, Manto Yung, Yu Liu, Xuejiao Liu, Wujie Wen, Luhong Liang, Kwang-Ting Tim Cheng, X. Sharon Hu and Yiyu Shi, “A 10.60 μW 150 GOPS Mixed-Bit-Width Sparse CNN Accelerator for Life-Threatening Ventricular Arrhythmia Detection,” in Proc. of the Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC), 2025.

  2. Jianbo Liu, Zephan Enciso, Boyang Cheng, Likai Pei, Steven Davis, Yifan Qin, Zhenge Jia, Xiaobo Sharon Hu, Yiyu Shi and Ningyuan Cao, “A 65nm Uncertainty-quantifiable Ventricular Arrhythmia Detection Engine with 1.75μJ per Inference,” in Proc. of IEEE International Solid- State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), 2025.

  3. Yifan Qin, Zheyu Yan, Wujie Wen, Xiaobo Sharon Hu, and Yiyu Shi, “Sustainable Deployment of Deep Neural Networks on Non-Volatile Compute-in-Memory Accelerators”. In: International Conference on Hardware/Software Codesign and System Synthesis (CODES+ISSS), 2024.

  4. Likai Pei*, Yifan Qin*, Zephan M. Enciso, Boyang Cheng, Jianbo Liu, Steven Davis, Zhenge Jia, Michael Niemier, Yiyu Shi, X. Sharon Hu and Ningyuan Cao. “Towards Uncertainty-Quantifiable Biomedical Intelligence: Mixed-signal Compute-in-Entropy for Bayesian Neural Networks”. In: IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD), 2024. (*Equal contribution)(acceptance rate 24%)(2024 William J. McCalla Best Paper Award Candidate)(10 out of 802 submissions)

  5. Yifan Qin, Zheyu Yan, Zixuan Pan, Wujie Wen, Xiaobo Sharon Hu, and Yiyu Shi. “TSB: Tiny Shared Block for Efficient DNN Deployment on NVCIM Accelerators”. In: IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD), 2024.(acceptance rate 24%)

  6. Zheyu Yan, Yifan Qin, Xiaobo Sharon Hu, and Yiyu Shi. “On the viability of using LLMs for SW/HW co-design: An example in designing CiM DNN accelerators”. In: 2023 IEEE 36th International System-on-Chip Conference (SOCC). IEEE. 2023, pp. 1–6.

  7. Zheyu Yan, Yifan Qin, Wujie Wen, Xiaobo Sharon Hu, and Yiyu Shi. “Improving realistic worst-case perfor- mance of NVCiM DNN accelerators through training with right-censored gaussian noise”. In: 2023 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer Aided Design (ICCAD). IEEE. 2023, pp. 1–9. (2023 William J. McCalla Best Paper Award)(2 out of 750 submissions)

Review Experience

  • ACM/IEEE International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD)
  • Scientific Reports
  • Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI Conference (GLSVLSI)

Chip Demo

  • 06/2024 Life-Threatening Ventricular Arrhythmia Detection Soft/Hard-ware Co-Design Accelerator (AC-Codesign V1) ——Access center, HK

    Designed and implemented a convolutional neural network system for ventricular arrhythmia detection with a 40nm LP TSMC CNN accelerator, delivering a deployable chip demo. Led the full-stack design, from UI to backend, achieving substantial reductions in inference latency and energy consumption through optimized quantization and pruning techniques, demonstrating high-performance real-time detection capabilities.

    demo chip ui

  • 02/2025 A 65nm Uncertainty-quantifiable Ventricular Arrhythmia Detection Engine with 1.75μJ per Inference ——ISSCC conference, SF
    65nm Bayesian Convolutional Neural Network (Bayes-CNN) accelerator for VA detection, delivering low-power and UQ-enabled VA detection, ensuring reliable performance under out-of-distribution data, hardware imperfections and temperature variations. Led the software algorithm part and engaged in UI and hardware design.

    isscc demo

Leadership and service

  • President
    Table Tennis Association of Huazhong University of Science and Technology
    Wuhan | Aug 2014 - Aug 2015
    Manage and organize school sports competitions and liaise with the Sports Academy secretary and finance department for project reporting and financial reimbursement

  • Member
    Team of Undergraduate Mathematical Modeling of Huazhong University of Science and Technology
    Wuhan | Mar 2014 - Sep 2014
    National 2nd Prize in China Contemporary Undergraduate Mathematical Contest in Modeling

  • Athlete
    College team of table tennis in Huazhong university of science and technology
    Wuhan | May 2014 - Sep 2016
    It is an honor to serve as one of the college team with many professional players, many of whom have become my good friends and have tought me to stock trading :)

  • Museum Docent
    Wuhan Museum | Aug 2015 - Aug 2016

    • The museum’s opening introduction. (PIC: Wuhan museum, main hall painting)

    museum painting

    • The Ming dynasty (1368 AD to 1644 AD) and Qing dynasty (1644 AD to 1911 AD) artifacts historical introduction. (PIC: Artifact example)

    artifact

Interesting things about me

  • One of my paintings was included in the Hubei Province Art Textbook (China People’s Education Press).
  • My favorite sport before high school was table tennis, and in high school I liked to play soccer ball with my friends.
  • I like drawing and writing, things that involve imagination.
  • I like spending time with my friends in GYM.

My Highschool

highschool

My PhD

travel

“风筝不断线” — Guanzhong Wu