Dr Tom Spink
Senior Researcher
School of Informatics
University of Edinburgh
About
My name is Tom Spink, and I'm a senior researcher in the School of Informatics,
at the University of Edinburgh.
I am a member of the Institute for Computing Systems Architecture (ICSA), and the Compiler and Architecture Design (CArD) group.
I am currently working as the lead researcher on the McDoC project, with
Björn Franke, and I previously worked with
Michael O'Boyle on the PAMELA project.
I am a co-investigator on the JIT-as-a-service project, due to start in September - and we're
looking for PhD students! Please get in touch if you're interested in compilers, runtime systems, and
generally computer systems research.
My research interests include:
- High-performance cross-architecture virtualisation/simulation
- Just-in-time compilation for dynamic binary translation
- Operating Systems
- The Internet-of-things, especially:
- Intelligent infrastructure
- Railway signalling and control systems
- V2V and V2I communications
- Security and privacy
My PhD thesis is entitled, "Efficient Cross-architecture Hardware Virtualisation" and proposes methods
for improving the performance of the virtualisation of hardware that is significantly different to the host machine's architecture.
PhD Studentships
We have a number of PhD studentships available in the area of Just-in-time Compilation. If
you're interested, please get in touch!
Teaching and Supervision
I am a personal tutor for MSc students. If you want to get in touch to arrange a meeting, please e-mail me: tspink@inf.ed.ac.uk.
In the 2019/20 academic session, I will be teaching:
Current/Previous Students
If you want to study for a PhD with me, please get in touch!
- James Renwick (MSc 2018)
- Wenqing Zhong (MSc 2020, co-supervised with Björn Franke)
- Robert Lamacraft (MSc 2020)
- Yashvi Chawla (MSc 2020)
- Kimberley Stonehouse (BSc, expected 2021)
- Silver Campbell (MInf, expected 2022, co-supervised with Björn Franke)
- Kuba Kaszyk (PhD, co-supervised with Björn Franke)
- Martin Kristien (PhD, co-supervised with Björn Franke)
- Jakub Szewczyk (PhD, co-supervised with Antonio Barbalace)
Software
Simulation Tools
Throughout my research career, I have developed a number of different tools for simulation. I am the lead developer of the Captive
cross-architecture virtualisation hypervisor, and I heavily contribute to the GenSim simulator generator platform. Recently, our
research group has released our flagship high-speed GPU simulator.
For more details on our simulation tools, please visit: gensim.org.
InfOS
InfOS is a complete operating system, developed for research purposes. Its aim is to provide an operating system built
on modern programming paradigms, employing object oriented principles, modularity, and ease-of-use. It is used as the primary
coursework component of the Operating Systems course, at the School of Informatics.
InfOS is available as open-source software on github: github.com/tspink/infos.
DPMT
DPMT is the new project management system for MSc and undergraduate final-year projects. It is used by students and potential
supervisors to propose projects, collect interest in projects and allocate students to those projects.
Contact
- E-mail: tspink@inf.ed.ac.uk
- Phone: 0131 650 8285
- Office Address:
Dr Tom Spink
IF-1.47
Informatics Forum
10 Crichton Street
Edinburgh
EH8 9AB