Dr Syed Waqar Nabi

  • Lecturer (School of Computing Science)

telephone: 01413307104
email: Syed.Nabi@glasgow.ac.uk

F112, Sir Alwyn Williams Building, School of Computing Science

Import to contacts

ORCID iDhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-3835-4851

Biography

Dr S Waqar Nabi is a Lecturer at the School of Computing Science, University of Glasgow. He is a member of Glasgow Parallelism research group (GPG) of Systems Research Centre (GLASS), and also the Centre for Computing Science Education (CCSE).

He teaches primarily for the BSc (Hons) Software Engineering (Graduate Apprenticeship) program, covering foundational courses in the area of: logic design, computer architecture, operating systems, network systems, data structures, algorithms, and discrete maths. He is also deeply involved in structuring and coordinating the "work-based learning" aspect of the apprenticeship program.

Earlier at the School, he worked as a post-doc on the EPSRC funded project “Exploiting Parallelism through Type Transformations for Hybrid Manycore Systems”, with a focus on automatically targeting FPGA devices for accelerating legacy scientific code.

More on his LinkedIn profile.

Research interests

  • Improve accessibility to heterogeneous platforms (CPUs, GPUs and FPGAs) via smarter tools and compilers.
  • Cost models, Code generation, and Optimization for heterogeneous devices.
  • Acceleration of Scientific Models and Machine Learning on Heterogeneous Platforms.
  • Low-carbon and sustainable computing.
  • Exploring High-level Programming and Synthesis for FPGAs.
  • FPGA-based embedded systems.
  • Computing Science and Software Engineering Education.
  • Work-Based & Competency-Based Learning.
  • Higher education in Low and Middle Income Countries.

Publications

List by: Type | Date

Jump to: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014
Number of items: 27.

2024

Barr, M. , Andrei, O. , Morrison, A. and Nabi, S. W. (2024) The Development of Students' Professional Competencies on a Work-Based Software Engineering Program. In: 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE TS), Portland, OR, USA, 20-23 March 2024, pp. 81-87. ISBN 9798400704239 (doi: 10.1145/3626252.3630944)

Szafarczyk, R., Nabi, S. W. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2024) A High-Frequency Load-Store Queue with Speculative Allocations for High-Level Synthesis. In: International Conference on Field Programmable Technology (FPT'23), Yokohama, Japan, 11-14 December 2023, pp. 115-124. ISBN 9798350359114 (doi: 10.1109/ICFPT59805.2023.00018)

2023

Szafarczyk, R., Nabi, S. W. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2023) Compiler Discovered Dynamic Scheduling of Irregular Code in High-Level Synthesis. In: 33rd International Conference on Field-Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL 2023), Gothenburg, Sweden, 4-8 September 2023, (Accepted for Publication)

Andrei, O. and Nabi, S. W. (2023) On Students’ Experiences with Algorithm Tracing using Pair Programming. In: 19th ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (ICER 2023), Chicago, Illinois, USA, 8-10 October 2023, (Accepted for Publication)

Szafarczyk, R., Nabi, S. W. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2023) Reducing FPGA Memory Footprint of Stencil Codes through Automatic Extraction of Memory Patterns. In: 32nd International Conference on Field-Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL 2022), Belfast, United Kingdom, 29 August - 2 September 2022, pp. 148-152. ISBN 9781665473903 (doi: 10.1109/FPL57034.2022.00033)

2022

Barr, M. and Nabi, S. W. (2022) The Development of Students' Employability Skills on a Work-Based Software Engineering Degree Programme. In: 2022 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), Uppsala, Sweden, 8-11 October 2022, ISBN 9781665462440 (doi: 10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962611)

2021

Cohen, C. , Nabi, S. W. , Higham, C. F. , Putnam, M., Kootstra, G. J. and van Hell, J. (2021) Individual variation in the structure of bilingual grammars. Language, 97(4), pp. 752-792. (doi: 10.1353/lan.2021.0064)

Raj, R. et al. (2021) Professional Competencies in Computing Education. In: ITiCSE 2021: 26th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, Paderborn, Germany, 26 June - 1 July 2021, pp. 133-161. ISBN 9781450392020 (doi: 10.1145/3502870.3506570)

Khan, T. M. and Nabi, S. W. (2021) English versus Native Language for Higher Education in Computer Science: a Pilot Study. In: 21st Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research, 18-21 Nov 2021, p. 7. ISBN 9781450384889 (doi: 10.1145/3488042.3488070)

Khalid, M. et al. (2021) PERCEPTRON: an open-source GPU-accelerated proteoform identification pipeline for top-down proteomics. Nucleic Acids Research, 49(W1), W510-W515. (doi: 10.1093/nar/gkab368) (PMID:33999207)

2020

Barr, M. , Nabi, S. W. and Somerville, D. (2020) Online Delivery of Intensive Software Engineering Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic. In: 32nd IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEE&T 2020), Munich, Germany, 09-12 Nov 2020, ISBN 9781728168074 (doi: 10.1109/CSEET49119.2020.9206196)

Nabi, S. W. , Maguire, J. , Draper, S. and Cutts, Q. (2020) Keeping Software Engineering Students in Touch With Not Only What They Are to Learn, But With Why. In: 32nd IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering Education & Training (CSEE&T 2020), Munich, Germany, 9-12 Nov 2020, ISBN 9781728168074 (doi: 10.1109/CSEET49119.2020.9206237)

Cohen, C. , Higham, C. F. and Nabi, S. W. (2020) Deep learnability: using neural networks to quantify language similarity and learnability. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 3, 43. (doi: 10.3389/frai.2020.00043)

Urlea, C. , Vanderbauwhede, W. and Nabi, S. W. (2020) Efficient FPGA Cost-Performance Space Exploration Using Type-driven Program Transformations. In: 2019 International Conference on Reconfigurable Computing and FPGAs (ReConFig 2019), Cancun, Mexico, 9-11 Dec 2019, ISBN 9781728119571 (doi: 10.1109/ReConFig48160.2019.8994801)

2019

Nabi, S. W. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2019) Automatic pipelining and vectorization of scientific code for FPGAs. International Journal of Reconfigurable Computing, 2019, 7348013. (doi: 10.1155/2019/7348013)

Nabi, S. W. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2019) FPGA design space exploration for scientific HPC applications using a fast and accurate cost model based on roofline analysis. Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, 133, pp. 407-419. (doi: 10.1016/j.jpdc.2017.05.014)

Nabi, S. W. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2019) Smart-Cache: Optimising Memory Accesses for Arbitrary Boundaries and Stencils on FPGAs. In: 33rd IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, Reconfigurable Architectures Workshop (RAW 2019), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 20-24 May 2019, ISBN 9781728135106 (doi: 10.1109/IPDPSW.2019.00024)

Vanderbauwhede, W. , Nabi, S. W. and Urlea, C. (2019) Type-driven automated program transformations and cost modelling for optimising streaming programs on FPGAs. International Journal of Parallel Programming, 47(1), pp. 114-136. (doi: 10.1007/s10766-018-0572-z)

2018

Nabi, S. W. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2018) MP-STREAM: A Memory Performance Benchmark for Design Space Exploration on Heterogeneous HPC Devices. In: 32nd IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, Reconfigurable Architectures Workshop (RAW 2018), Vancouver, BC, Canada, 21-25 May 2018, ISBN 9781538655559 (doi: 10.1109/IPDPSW.2018.00036)

Nabi, S. W. (2018) Individual Differences in Bilingual Grammars. 2nd International Symposium on Bilingual and L2 Processing in Adults and Children (ISBPAC 2018), Braunschweig, Germany, 24-25 May 2018.

2017

Hussain, M. A., Badar, R. and Nabi, S. W. (2017) Comparison of Hand-Written RTL code against High-Level Synthesis for Blowfish and Tiny Encrpytion Algorithm (TEA). 2017 International Conference on FPGA Reconfiguration for General-Purpose Computing (FPGA4GPC), Hamburg, Germany, 9-10 May 2017.

2016

Hentschel, K. T., Vanderbauwhede, W. and Nabi, S. W. (2016) FPGA port of a large scientific model from legacy code: the Emanuel convection scheme. In: Joubert, G. R., Leather, H., Parsons, M., Peters, F. and Sawyer, M. (eds.) Parallel Computing: On the Road to Exascale. Series: Advances in parallel computing (27). IOS Press: Amsterdam, Netherlands, pp. 469-478. ISBN 9781614996200 (doi: 10.3233/978-1-61499-621-7-469)

Nabi, S. W. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2016) A Fast and Accurate Cost Model for FPGA Design Space Exploration in HPC Applications. In: 30th IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium, Chicago, IL, USA, 23-27 May 2016, (doi: 10.1109/IPDPSW.2016.155)

Nabi, S. W. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2016) Using Type Transformations to Generate Program Variants for FPGA Design Space Exploration. In: 2015 International Conference on ReConFigurable Computing and FPGAs (ReConFig), Mexico City, Mexico, 7-9 Dec 2015, pp. 1-6. ISBN 9781467394055 (doi: 10.1109/ReConFig.2015.7393365)

Vanderbauwhede, W. and Nabi, S. W. (2016) FPGAs as components in heterogeneous high-performance computing systems: raising the abstraction level. In: Joubert, G. R., Leather, H., Parsons, M., Peters, F. and Sawyer, M. (eds.) Parallel Computing: On the Road to Exascale. Series: Advances in parallel computing (27). IOS Press: Amsterdam, Netherlands, pp. 505-514. ISBN 9781614996200 (doi: 10.3233/978-1-61499-621-7-505)

2015

Nabi, S. W. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2015) An Intermediate Language and Estimator for Automated Design Space Exploration on FPGAs. In: HEART2015: International Symposium on Highly Efficient Accelerators and Reconfigurable Technologies, Boston, MA, USA, 1-2 Jun 2015,

2014

Nabi, S. W. , Hameed, S. N. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2014) A Reconfigurable Vector Instruction Processor for Accelerating a Convection Parametrization Model on FPGAs. In: HEART2014: International Symposium on Highly Efficient Accelerators and Reconfigurable Technologies, Sendai, Japan, 9-11 Jun 2014,

This list was generated on Thu Apr 18 21:36:55 2024 BST.
Jump to: Articles | Book Sections | Conference or Workshop Item | Conference Proceedings
Number of items: 27.

Articles

Cohen, C. , Nabi, S. W. , Higham, C. F. , Putnam, M., Kootstra, G. J. and van Hell, J. (2021) Individual variation in the structure of bilingual grammars. Language, 97(4), pp. 752-792. (doi: 10.1353/lan.2021.0064)

Khalid, M. et al. (2021) PERCEPTRON: an open-source GPU-accelerated proteoform identification pipeline for top-down proteomics. Nucleic Acids Research, 49(W1), W510-W515. (doi: 10.1093/nar/gkab368) (PMID:33999207)

Cohen, C. , Higham, C. F. and Nabi, S. W. (2020) Deep learnability: using neural networks to quantify language similarity and learnability. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 3, 43. (doi: 10.3389/frai.2020.00043)

Nabi, S. W. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2019) Automatic pipelining and vectorization of scientific code for FPGAs. International Journal of Reconfigurable Computing, 2019, 7348013. (doi: 10.1155/2019/7348013)

Nabi, S. W. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2019) FPGA design space exploration for scientific HPC applications using a fast and accurate cost model based on roofline analysis. Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, 133, pp. 407-419. (doi: 10.1016/j.jpdc.2017.05.014)

Vanderbauwhede, W. , Nabi, S. W. and Urlea, C. (2019) Type-driven automated program transformations and cost modelling for optimising streaming programs on FPGAs. International Journal of Parallel Programming, 47(1), pp. 114-136. (doi: 10.1007/s10766-018-0572-z)

Book Sections

Hentschel, K. T., Vanderbauwhede, W. and Nabi, S. W. (2016) FPGA port of a large scientific model from legacy code: the Emanuel convection scheme. In: Joubert, G. R., Leather, H., Parsons, M., Peters, F. and Sawyer, M. (eds.) Parallel Computing: On the Road to Exascale. Series: Advances in parallel computing (27). IOS Press: Amsterdam, Netherlands, pp. 469-478. ISBN 9781614996200 (doi: 10.3233/978-1-61499-621-7-469)

Vanderbauwhede, W. and Nabi, S. W. (2016) FPGAs as components in heterogeneous high-performance computing systems: raising the abstraction level. In: Joubert, G. R., Leather, H., Parsons, M., Peters, F. and Sawyer, M. (eds.) Parallel Computing: On the Road to Exascale. Series: Advances in parallel computing (27). IOS Press: Amsterdam, Netherlands, pp. 505-514. ISBN 9781614996200 (doi: 10.3233/978-1-61499-621-7-505)

Conference or Workshop Item

Nabi, S. W. (2018) Individual Differences in Bilingual Grammars. 2nd International Symposium on Bilingual and L2 Processing in Adults and Children (ISBPAC 2018), Braunschweig, Germany, 24-25 May 2018.

Hussain, M. A., Badar, R. and Nabi, S. W. (2017) Comparison of Hand-Written RTL code against High-Level Synthesis for Blowfish and Tiny Encrpytion Algorithm (TEA). 2017 International Conference on FPGA Reconfiguration for General-Purpose Computing (FPGA4GPC), Hamburg, Germany, 9-10 May 2017.

Conference Proceedings

Barr, M. , Andrei, O. , Morrison, A. and Nabi, S. W. (2024) The Development of Students' Professional Competencies on a Work-Based Software Engineering Program. In: 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE TS), Portland, OR, USA, 20-23 March 2024, pp. 81-87. ISBN 9798400704239 (doi: 10.1145/3626252.3630944)

Szafarczyk, R., Nabi, S. W. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2024) A High-Frequency Load-Store Queue with Speculative Allocations for High-Level Synthesis. In: International Conference on Field Programmable Technology (FPT'23), Yokohama, Japan, 11-14 December 2023, pp. 115-124. ISBN 9798350359114 (doi: 10.1109/ICFPT59805.2023.00018)

Szafarczyk, R., Nabi, S. W. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2023) Compiler Discovered Dynamic Scheduling of Irregular Code in High-Level Synthesis. In: 33rd International Conference on Field-Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL 2023), Gothenburg, Sweden, 4-8 September 2023, (Accepted for Publication)

Andrei, O. and Nabi, S. W. (2023) On Students’ Experiences with Algorithm Tracing using Pair Programming. In: 19th ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (ICER 2023), Chicago, Illinois, USA, 8-10 October 2023, (Accepted for Publication)

Szafarczyk, R., Nabi, S. W. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2023) Reducing FPGA Memory Footprint of Stencil Codes through Automatic Extraction of Memory Patterns. In: 32nd International Conference on Field-Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL 2022), Belfast, United Kingdom, 29 August - 2 September 2022, pp. 148-152. ISBN 9781665473903 (doi: 10.1109/FPL57034.2022.00033)

Barr, M. and Nabi, S. W. (2022) The Development of Students' Employability Skills on a Work-Based Software Engineering Degree Programme. In: 2022 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), Uppsala, Sweden, 8-11 October 2022, ISBN 9781665462440 (doi: 10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962611)

Raj, R. et al. (2021) Professional Competencies in Computing Education. In: ITiCSE 2021: 26th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, Paderborn, Germany, 26 June - 1 July 2021, pp. 133-161. ISBN 9781450392020 (doi: 10.1145/3502870.3506570)

Khan, T. M. and Nabi, S. W. (2021) English versus Native Language for Higher Education in Computer Science: a Pilot Study. In: 21st Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research, 18-21 Nov 2021, p. 7. ISBN 9781450384889 (doi: 10.1145/3488042.3488070)

Barr, M. , Nabi, S. W. and Somerville, D. (2020) Online Delivery of Intensive Software Engineering Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic. In: 32nd IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEE&T 2020), Munich, Germany, 09-12 Nov 2020, ISBN 9781728168074 (doi: 10.1109/CSEET49119.2020.9206196)

Nabi, S. W. , Maguire, J. , Draper, S. and Cutts, Q. (2020) Keeping Software Engineering Students in Touch With Not Only What They Are to Learn, But With Why. In: 32nd IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering Education & Training (CSEE&T 2020), Munich, Germany, 9-12 Nov 2020, ISBN 9781728168074 (doi: 10.1109/CSEET49119.2020.9206237)

Urlea, C. , Vanderbauwhede, W. and Nabi, S. W. (2020) Efficient FPGA Cost-Performance Space Exploration Using Type-driven Program Transformations. In: 2019 International Conference on Reconfigurable Computing and FPGAs (ReConFig 2019), Cancun, Mexico, 9-11 Dec 2019, ISBN 9781728119571 (doi: 10.1109/ReConFig48160.2019.8994801)

Nabi, S. W. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2019) Smart-Cache: Optimising Memory Accesses for Arbitrary Boundaries and Stencils on FPGAs. In: 33rd IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, Reconfigurable Architectures Workshop (RAW 2019), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 20-24 May 2019, ISBN 9781728135106 (doi: 10.1109/IPDPSW.2019.00024)

Nabi, S. W. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2018) MP-STREAM: A Memory Performance Benchmark for Design Space Exploration on Heterogeneous HPC Devices. In: 32nd IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, Reconfigurable Architectures Workshop (RAW 2018), Vancouver, BC, Canada, 21-25 May 2018, ISBN 9781538655559 (doi: 10.1109/IPDPSW.2018.00036)

Nabi, S. W. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2016) A Fast and Accurate Cost Model for FPGA Design Space Exploration in HPC Applications. In: 30th IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium, Chicago, IL, USA, 23-27 May 2016, (doi: 10.1109/IPDPSW.2016.155)

Nabi, S. W. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2016) Using Type Transformations to Generate Program Variants for FPGA Design Space Exploration. In: 2015 International Conference on ReConFigurable Computing and FPGAs (ReConFig), Mexico City, Mexico, 7-9 Dec 2015, pp. 1-6. ISBN 9781467394055 (doi: 10.1109/ReConFig.2015.7393365)

Nabi, S. W. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2015) An Intermediate Language and Estimator for Automated Design Space Exploration on FPGAs. In: HEART2015: International Symposium on Highly Efficient Accelerators and Reconfigurable Technologies, Boston, MA, USA, 1-2 Jun 2015,

Nabi, S. W. , Hameed, S. N. and Vanderbauwhede, W. (2014) A Reconfigurable Vector Instruction Processor for Accelerating a Convection Parametrization Model on FPGAs. In: HEART2014: International Symposium on Highly Efficient Accelerators and Reconfigurable Technologies, Sendai, Japan, 9-11 Jun 2014,

This list was generated on Thu Apr 18 21:36:55 2024 BST.

Supervision

MSci, MSc and Undergraduate projects (selected)

  • Automatic code translation from C to OpenCL for acceleration on GPUs
  • Accelerating oceanic modeling on GPUs using CUDA
  • Comparing parallel programming frameworks (CUDA, OpenCL, OpenACC, SYCL) for scientific computing
  • Using FPGAs for accelerating scientific models from the domains of fluid dynamics
  • Development and Optimisation of Quantum Computing Simulators with a Study of Quantum Algorithms
  • Range Type Attributes and Number Representations for FPGAs
  • Using OpenCL for Accelerating Deep-Learning on FPGAs
  • Transformation of pipe-based OpenCL kernels into an LLVM-based intermediate representation for FPGA programming.
  • Using Machine Learning to Uncover Language Features in Synthetic and Real Languages 
  • Static analysis of executable code for detecting backdoors
  • Using graph analysis on neural network models of synthetic languages

 

 

Teaching

I teach the following two courses regulalry for the Graduate Apprenticeship in Software Engineering program (which together cover these domains at an introductory level: Logic Design, Computer Organization and Architecture, Assembly language programming, Operating Systems, Networked Systems, Data Structures, Algorithms, Discrete Mathmematics)

 

I have co-designed and tutor teach these non-credit courses: