Alex's photo taken Spring 2008, for LSU Gumbo's graduates. Homepage of Alexandre (aka Alex) Tabbal,  
graduate student at ECE, researcher with CCT, in LSU*  
atabbal AT lsu DOT edu (EceMail)

Mailing Address:
314 Johnston Hall, CCT, LSU
Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA


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( last updated,  August 2008 )


Alex is a doctoral student at the Electrical Engineering department (EE) of Louisiana State University (LSU) since Summer of 2006 (when I made it to the local newspaper -The Reveille, in this article).  In Fall of 2006 he joined the Center for Computation and Technology (CCT), to do research under Professor Thomas Sterling (Tron) with the ParalleX group.  In Fall of 2007, he passed the reviews for the qualifier exam at the EE department, a major hurdle in the PhD program.   The success of that exam made him earn a Masters of Science in Electrial Engineering.  In Summer of 2008, his PhD plan of study was approved by the Graduate Committee (yet unofficial), hence he is done with required class work.  Starting Fall of 2008, he should be fully focusing on his research and getting ready for his subject proposal defense, which he expects to happen by end of 2009.  Alex is planning to graduate in Summer of 2010 (or 2011 max!), earning a Doctoral degree in Electrial Engineering. 

Alex is born ORTHODOX Christian in Beirut, Lebanon where he grew up and live all his life untill 25!  There he earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer and Communication Engineering (CCE) from the American University of Science and Technology (AUST).  There he was a student worker in the different Laboratories (circuit design, digital logic, communication systems, control systems, c++ programming) that the CCT department offers.  Before moving to US, Alex worked with Dr. Majd Sakr (now -2008, at CMU) as a teacher assistant of the computer architecture classes (undergraduate as well as graduate) for 4 semesters; he enjoyed teaching and helping students learning, which was another motive to join a PhD program.


His research interest span the area of "System and Network Architecture for Cluster Computers".  He knows that "Bandwidth problems can be cured with money.  But latency problems are harder because the speed of light is fixed, since you can't bribe God".  Based on that, Alex focuses on system architecture for high-performance computing applications; using different and new approaches, integrating reconfigurable hardware, as system-software accelerators, to support the new execution model of computation, ParalleX.  He is also interested in power consumption issues at the systerm level as well as the microarchitecture one.   He is actively working on: design using FPGAs (e.g. Xilinx V4), using Verilog HDL;  trying to take advantage of the emerging high-bandwidth / low-latency system bus (i.e. HyperTransport), using DRC modules (RPUs);  and Computer Architecture design (Multiprocessor Systems, Unconventional Architectures, Simulations).



Besides classes and research, Alex have been active in the High-Performance Computing area, reviewing papers to some major conferences; here is a list:  IPDPS 2008 ( IPDPS.org);    HiPC 2008 ( HiPCA.org);   ISCA: PDCCS 2008 ( ISCA-HQ.org);  IEEE/ACM SC 2008 ( SC08.SuperComputing.org);  IEEE Cluster 2008 ( Cluster2008.org);  IEEE HPCC 2008 ( HPCC08.DLUT.Edu.Cn);  IEEE SCC 2008 ( Conferences.Computer.org/SCC/2008);  IADIS Applied Computing Conference( www.Computing-Conf.org/);  IEEE AINA 2008 ( www.AINA-conference.org);  MGC 2007 ( MGC2007.lncc.br);  FGCN 2007 ( SERSC.org);  GAM 2007 workshop and PPAM 2007 (PPAM.PCZ.pl);  Grid 2007 ( Grid2007.org);  IEEE Int'l SCC 2007 ( Conferences.Computer.org);  GPC 2007 ( www-lipn.univ-paris13.fr);  CCGrid07 ( CCGrid07.lncc.br/);  IPDPS ( IPDPS.org)

Also he attended the following conferences:

Originally Alex is from Lebanon, the country that he likes and appreciates.  Though it is in the Middle-East, Lebanon's president is (even by the constitution) a Christian.  AUST, the college he graduated from, is (mainly) in Ashrafieh, a beautiful area in Beirut.  He sent a letter to his CCE fellows at AUST, which got published in the Spring of 2008 Newsletter article (in pdf).



* this website is mirrored on three servers with three URLs maintained by the university, the department, and the center.
(also it is important to mention that this website does NOT reflect LSU's, ECE's, or CCT's openions on any topic discussed)