Nahjay Battieste
Hardware Portfolio

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.