Richie Li
San Jose,CA
Summary
I’m Richie, an MEng candidate in EECS at UC Irvine with a B.S. in Computer Engineering (Dean’s Scholar) from SJSU. With expertise in embedded systems, hardware acceleration, and AI-driven optimization, I specialize in firmware development, FPGA computing, and machine learning integration. As a Firmware Engineer II at Socionext, I developed SoC firmware and device drivers while leading system validation for ARMv8-R architectures and high-speed interfaces. My research at UC Irvine focuses on FPGA-accelerated deep learning, where I designed a Tiled Matrix Multiplication Accelerator for Transformer self-attention, achieving a 7× speedup over PyTorch on ARM CPUs, alongside a hardware-dataflow co-design that reduced latency by 90%+. Passionate about hardware-software co-design and real-time computing, I aim to drive high-performance, energy-efficient embedded solutions.
Overview
3
3
years of professional experience
Work History
Firmware Engineer
Socionext US
04.2024 - 09.2024
- Developed and maintained firmware and device drivers for ARMv8-R CPU architectures, focusing on AXI DMA, GTC, GPIO and serial communication protocols (UART, SPI, I2C).
- Performed embedded SoC system architecture analysis and contributed to low-level design documentation for future development.
- Collaborate with teams across the globe for development and debug.
- Managed and maintained custom Linux environments for the firmware team using Docker, ensuring efficient development workflows.
Associate Firmware Engineer
Socionext US
01.2022 - 04.2024
- Conducted hardware-level testing, validation, and debugging for SoC firmware, collaborating with ASIC design teams to troubleshoot complex system issues.
- Assisted in hardware design quality control processes, identifying areas for improvement and synchronizing results across teams.
- Led debugging, Chip & Eval Board bring-up activities, utilizing embedded system debuggers, logic analyzers, and multimeters for troubleshooting.
Education
Master of Engineering - Electrical Engineering And Computer Science
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA06-2025
Bachelor of Science - Computer Engineering
San Jose State University
San Jose, CA01-2021
Skills
Core Expertise Technical Skills Performance Optimization
- Embedded Systems & Firmware: Embedded C, Device Drivers, FreeRTOS, SoC Bring-up, Board Bring-up, ARM/x86 Architectures
- Hardware Acceleration & FPGA: FPGA Development, Hardware Accelerators, Digital Circuit Design, Systolic Arrays, High-Level Synthesis (HLS)
- Machine Learning & AI: Deep Learning, Transformer Acceleration, Quantization, Predictive Maintenance, Algorithm Optimization
- Hardware-Software Co-Design: Dataflow Mapping, Energy-Efficient Computing, High-Performance Computing (HPC), FPGA-Based AI
- Programming: C, C, Python, Verilog, ARM/MIPS Assembly
- Development Tools: Linux (Ubuntu), Docker, Git, Jenkins, Vivado, Vitis HLS
- Software & Systems Engineering: Agile Development, Compiler Construction, Full-Stack Development, Industrial IoT
- Loop Unrolling, Memory Hierarchy Design, Parallel Computing, FPGA Resource Allocation
Languages
English
Native or Bilingual
Chinese (Cantonese)
Native or Bilingual
Chinese (Mandarin)
Full Professional
Japanese
Limited Working
Italian
Limited Working
Software
Synopsys Vdk
Docker
AMD Vivado™ Design Suite
AMD Vitis™
Jupyter Notebook
Timeline
Firmware Engineer
Socionext US
04.2024 - 09.2024
Associate Firmware Engineer
Socionext US
01.2022 - 04.2024
Master of Engineering - Electrical Engineering And Computer Science
University of California, Irvine
Bachelor of Science - Computer Engineering
San Jose State University
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