Nahjay Battieste
Hardware Portfolio

Computer Engineering Undergraduate specializing in FPGA Design, Computer Architecture, and Embedded Firmware.

VHDL SystemVerilog CUDA C / C++ Rust

FPGA-Based CNN Accelerator
& Memory Hierarchy Design

Designed a high-throughput hardware accelerator for Convolutional Neural Networks on an FPGA. Architected a custom sliding-window memory buffer to minimize off-chip bandwidth and implemented a fully pipelined RGB datapath in VHDL, achieving single-cycle pixel processing throughput.

VHDL Python Vivado ModelSim

32-bit MIPS
Microarchitecture

Designed the microarchitecture and RTL for a 5-stage pipelined MIPS processor. Implemented hardware-based hazard detection and a data forwarding unit to resolve control and data dependencies without software bubbles, ensuring optimal pipeline efficiency.

VHDL Assembly Quartus

Real-Time Ray Tracing
on Cortex-M7

Ported and optimized a ray-tracing engine to run on a Teensy 4.1 microcontroller (600MHz). Addressed severe memory constraints and floating-point limitations to render 3D scenes in real-time on an embedded target, demonstrating efficient firmware resource management.

C++ Arduino / Teensy

Quantitative Analysis of
Cache Replacement Algorithms

Conducted trace-driven simulation using ChampSim to analyze the performance trade-offs of LRU vs. LFU replacement policies. Quantified the impact on hit rates and Average Memory Access Time (AMAT) across 10 million instruction cycles to inform architectural design decisions.

C++ ChampSim Python

Heterogeneous Computing
& Custom Kernel Modules

Developed custom Linux kernel modules for the NVIDIA Jetson Nano to interface with userspace applications. Implemented a heterogeneous computing pipeline that offloads image processing tasks to the GPU via CUDA while managing data transfer through character device drivers.

C CUDA Linux Kernel API