Yitzhak (Tsahi) Birk
Associate Professor
Yitzhak Birk has been on the faculty of the Electrical Engineering Department at the Technion since October 1991, and heads its Parallel Systems Laboratory (PSL). He received the B.Sc. (cum laude) and M.Sc. degrees from the Technion in 1975 and 1982, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from Stanford University in 1987, all in electrical engineering. From 1976 to 1981, he was project engineer in the Israel Defense Forces. From 1986 to 1991, he was a Research Staff Member at IBM’s Almaden Research Center, where he worked on parallel architectures, computer subsystems and passive fiber-optic interconnection networks. From 1993 to 1997, he also served as a consultant to HP Labs in the areas of storage systems and video servers, and was later involved with several companies.
Dr. Birk’s research interests include computer systems and subsystems, as well as communication networks. He is particularly interested in parallel and distributed architectures for information systems, including communication-intensive storage systems (e.g., multimedia servers) and satellite-based systems, with special attention to the true application requirements in each case. The judicious exploitation of redundancy for performance enhancement in these contexts has been the subject of much of his recent work. He is also engaged in research into various facets of processor architecture, attempting “cross fertilization” between his various areas of research.