publications

2026

1. SLEEK: Compressing Memory Copies for Floating-Point Data on GPUs

   Anju Mongandampulath Akathoott, Andrew Rodriguez, and Martin Burtscher

   In Proceedings of the 40th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, 2026

2025

1. On the Compressibility of Floating-Point Data in Posit and IEEE-754 Representation

   Andrew Rodriguez, and Martin Burtscher

   In Proceedings of the SC ’25 Workshops of the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, 2025

   Abs

   The IEEE 754 floating-point standard is the most used representation for real numbers in modern computer systems, despite issues in accuracy for certain applications. The posit format, which has several advantages, has been proposed as a direct drop-in replacement for IEEE floats. Many works compare the use of posits to floats in a wide range of scientific computing domains. However, there has not been any work looking into the compressibility of posit data. In this paper, we compare the compression ratios of different algorithms when the input is encoded in IEEE format and in posit format. We evaluate 5 lossless general-purpose compressors as well as several new compression algorithms synthesized by our LC framework on 14 single-precision inputs from the SDRBench suite, encoded in float and posit format. Our results show that that 4 of the 6 compressors yield an average of 2.59% reduction in compression ratio on posit data, whereas bzip2 provides a 1.74% increase in compression ratio, with XZ providing the highest ratios for both encodings.

2. Reachability in restricted chemical reaction networks

   Robert M. Alaniz, Bin Fu, Timothy Gomez, Elise Grizzell, Andrew Rodriguez, Marco Rodriguez, Robert Schweller, and Tim Wylie

   Theoretical Computer Science, 2025

   Abs

   The popularity of molecular computation has given rise to several models of abstraction, one of the more recent ones being Chemical Reaction Networks (CRNs). These are equivalent to other popular computational models, such as Vector Addition Systems and Petri-Nets, and restricted versions are equivalent to Population Protocols. This paper continues the work on core reachability questions related to Chemical Reaction Networks; given two configurations, can one reach the other according to the system’s rules? With no restrictions, reachability was recently shown to be Ackermann-complete, which resolved a decades-old problem. In this work, we fully characterize monotone reachability problems based on various restrictions such as the allowed rule size, the number of rules that may create a species (k-source), the number of rules that may consume a species (k-consuming), the volume, and whether the rules have an acyclic production order (feed-forward). We show PSPACE-completeness of reachability with only bimolecular reactions in two-source and two-consuming rules. This proves hardness of reachability in a restricted form of Population Protocols. This is accomplished using new techniques within the motion planning framework. We give several important results for feed-forward CRNs, where rules are single-source or single-consuming. We show that reachability is solvable in polynomial time as long as the system does not contain special void or autogenesis rules. We then fully characterize all systems of this type and show that with void/autogenesis rules, or more than one source and one consuming, the problems become NP-complete. Finally, we show several interesting special cases of CRNs based on these restrictions or slight relaxations and note future significant open questions related to this taxonomy.

2024

1. Adaptive Per-File Lossless Compression of Floating-Point Data

   Andrew Rodriguez, Noushin Azami, and Martin Burtscher

   In 2024 IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium Workshops (IPDPSW), 2024

2023

1. Building Squares With Optimal State Complexity in Restricted Active Self-Assembly

   Robert M. Alaniz, David Caballero, Sonya C. Cirlos, Timothy Gomez, Elise Grizzell, Andrew Rodriguez, Robert Schweller, Armando Tenorio, and Tim Wylie

   Journal of Computer and System Sciences, 2023

   Abs

   Tile Automata is a recently defined model of self-assembly that borrows many concepts from cellular automata to create active self-assembling systems where changes may be occurring within an assembly without requiring attachment. This model has been shown to be powerful even with limited assembly size, but many fundamental questions have yet to be explored. Here, we study the state complexity of assembling n×n squares in seeded Tile Automata systems where growth starts from a seed and tiles attach one at a time, similar to the abstract Tile Assembly Model. We provide optimal bounds for three classes of seeded Tile Automata systems (all without detachment), which vary in the amount of complexity allowed in the transition rules. We show that, in general, seeded Tile Automata systems require Θ(log14⁡n) states. For single-transition systems, where only one state may change in a transition rule, we show a bound of Θ(log13⁡n), and for deterministic systems, where each pair of states may only have one associated transition rule, a bound of Θ((log⁡nlog⁡log⁡n)12). Along the way, we provide optimal bounds for the subroutines of building binary strings and building O(log⁡n)×n rectangles.

2. Simulation of Multiple Stages in Single Bin Active Tile Self-Assembly

   Sonya C. Cirlos, Timothy Gomez, Elise Grizzell, Andrew Rodriguez, Robert Schweller, and Tim Wylie

   In Proc. of the 20th International Conference on Unconventional Computation and Natural Computation (UCNC’23), 2023
3. Covert Computation in the Abstract Tile-Assembly Model

   Robert M. Alaniz, David Caballero, Timothy Gomez, Elise Grizzell, Andrew Rodriguez, Robert Schweller, and Tim Wylie

   In Proc. of the Symposium on Algorithmic Foundations of Dynamic Networks (SAND’23), 2023
4. Reconfiguration of Linear Surface Chemical Reaction Networks with Bounded State Change

   Robert M. Alaniz, Michael Coulombe, Erik D. Demaine, Bin Fu, Timothy Gomez, Elise Grizzell, Ryan Knobel, Andrew Rodriguez, Robert Schweller, and Tim Wylie

   In Proc. of the 35th Canadian Conference on Computational Geometry (CCCG’23), 2023
5. Complexity of Reconfiguration in Surface Chemical Reaction Networks

   Robert M. Alaniz, Josh Brunner, Michael Coulombe, Erik D. Demaine, Yevhenii Diomidov, Timothy Gomez, Elise Grizzell, Ryan Knobel, Jason Lynch, Andrew Rodriguez, Robert Schweller, and Tim Wylie

   In Proc. of the 29th International Conference on DNA Computing and Molecular Programming (DNA’23), 2023

2022

1. Building Squares with Optimal State Complexity in Restricted Active Self-Assembly

   Robert M. Alaniz, David Caballero, Sonya C. Cirlos, Timothy Gomez, Elise Grizzell, Andrew Rodriguez, Robert Schweller, Armando Tenorio, and Tim Wylie

   In Proc. of the Symposium on Algorithmic Foundations of Dynamic Networks (SAND’22), 2022
2. Reachability in Population Protocols is PSPACE-Complete (Short Abstract)

   Bin Fu, Timothy Gomez, Elise Grizzell, Andrew Rodriguez, Robert Schweller, and Tim Wylie

   In The 24th Japan Conference on Discrete and Computational Geometry, Graphs, and Games (JCDCG3’22), 2022
3. Reachability in Pikmin Cave Sublevels is PSPACE-Complete (Short Abstract)

   Andrew Rodriguez

   In The 24th Japan Conference on Discrete and Computational Geometry, Graphs, and Games (JCDCG3’22), 2022