Richard Lin
California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolRichard Lin is a hardware-software engineer with 13 years of experience bridging programming languages and physical computing, recently completing a postdoc in electrical and computer engineering at UCLA. He builds developer-friendly HDL and compiler toolchains—work published at top venues (ACM CHI, UIST) and released as open source (e.g., the PolymorphicBlocks compiler and contributions to Chisel/FIRRTL). Equally comfortable in Python, Scala, and C++, he pairs embedded firmware and board-level hardware design with compiler and tooling improvements that make electronics more accessible to novices and more productive for experts. His practical track record includes 25+ demo boards (IoT devices, test equipment, robot controllers), contributions to widely used projects like Chisel and mbed-os, and a decade-plus of hands-on systems work with the Berkeley solar car program. Colleagues can expect a research-driven engineer who ships usable tools and keeps a playful attention to detail (and an affinity for plush ducks).
13 years of coding experience
9 years of employment as a software developer
Ph. D., Computer Science, Ph. D., Computer Science at University of California, Berkeley
Github Skills (29)
hardware-designs10
verilog10
c-language10
interrupt-handling10
firrtl10
intermediate-code10
digital-logic10
scala10
interrupt10
compiler-compiler10
digital-design10
sys10
intermediate-language10
chisel10
hdl10
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
freechipsproject/chisel-bootcamp
Jul 2017 - Feb 2020
Generator Bootcamp Material: Learn Chisel the Right Way
Role in this project:
Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:5 reviews, 29 commits, 2 PRs in 2 years 6 months
Contributions summary:Richard contributed to a Chisel bootcamp repository, demonstrating a strong understanding of hardware design using the Chisel language. The commits focused on adding and implementing fundamental digital logic components, such as shift registers, and combinational logic, using Scala within the Chisel environment. The work involved developing and testing these hardware modules, which are building blocks for digital circuits.
chiselhardwarevhdl
chipsalliance/chisel
Sep 2015 - Jul 2019
Chisel: A Modern Hardware Design Language
Role in this project:Software Engineer (focus on hardware design and verification)
Software Engineer (focus on hardware design and verification)Contributions:35 reviews, 316 commits, 150 PRs in 3 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Richard contributed to the Chisel hardware description language project by implementing and documenting core language features. Their commits focused on enhancing the language's capabilities, such as adding a new Vec constructor and providing API documentation for key components. The user also addressed style and documentation issues, improving code readability and maintainability within the Chisel library.
rtlasicvhdllanguage-designeda
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