Luis Chamberlain

@mcgrof

Principal Engineer · Linux Kernel Developer · Storage Systems Expert · AI Systems & Infrastructure

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About

I'm a systems engineer working at the intersection of operating systems, hardware architecture, and AI infrastructure. My background is in Linux kernel development, with extensive work in storage systems, memory management, and filesystem infrastructure.

At Samsung Semiconductor I focus on the systems challenges of large-scale workloads, exploring how emerging compute and memory architectures shape AI inference performance. My recent work studies the limits of large language model inference, particularly KV-cache bandwidth constraints and kernel-level optimizations for long-context decoding.

Over two decades in systems engineering, I've contributed to core Linux subsystems and built open-source infrastructure used by kernel developers worldwide. I'm interested in how low-level system design influences the next generation of AI computing platforms and believe the best solutions emerge through open collaboration.

Experience

Dec 2021 – Present
Principal Engineer
Samsung Semiconductor
Led High Capacity QLC SSD enablement through Linux memory management and XFS Large Block Sizes support, solving a 17-year community challenge. Received Samsung Presidential Award (July 2025). Now aligning storage/memory solutions with AI innovations.
Jan 2020 – Dec 2021
Linux Kernel File System Developer
SUSE
Scaled kdevops into the trusted filesystem automation framework used by kernel developers today. Maintained multiple core Linux subsystems: kmod, the usermode helper infrastructure, the kernel module loader, the firmware loader, sysctl, and the ath5k and prism54 wireless drivers.
Jul 2018 – Oct 2019
Principal Engineer
State Street
Storage architecture for Causeway Data Lake and Kubernetes deployments. Formalized kdevops with Terraform multi-cloud automation support and developed fio-tests for storage benchmarking.
Jan 2014 – Jul 2018
Linux Kernel Engineer
SUSE Labs
XFS stable maintainer. Xen pvops migration. Began the work that would evolve into kdevops, the kernel development and testing automation framework.
Apr 2008 – Dec 2013
Senior Linux Kernel Developer
Qualcomm Atheros
Developed the ath9k and ath9k_htc wireless drivers, and contributed to the open-source ath9k_htc firmware.

Founded the Linux kernel backports project, creating a generalized framework to decouple driver innovation from kernel release cycles. This enabled newer kernel subsystems and drivers to run on older distributions, which was critical for embedded systems such as WiFi routers.

The project was adopted by OpenWrt and became the de facto standard for delivering modern wireless drivers on legacy kernels. Its design proved broadly applicable beyond WiFi, and is still actively used across the industry — including by NVIDIA/Mellanox for MLNX OFED, where large portions of the networking, RDMA, and storage stack are maintained via backported kernel subsystems.

Ranked 15th top corporate Linux kernel contributor during this period.
May 2006 – Apr 2008
Software Engineer
Rutgers WINLAB
Led the community effort to replace the proprietary MadWifi driver with a fully open source alternative, culminating in the ath5k Linux wireless driver. Worked on addressing the regulatory restrictions that had prevented fully open source wireless drivers, leading to the CRDA regulatory framework.
2003 – 2006
Various Roles
Merrill Lynch, Vonage, Rutgers
AVP Global Tech, Security Engineer, Systems Programmer.
2003 (Student)
Open Source Contributor
Rutgers University / prism54 Project
Created the prism54 project as a hobby, which became the first 802.11g wireless driver merged into the Linux kernel.

Key Projects

2026 knlp

KV cache quantization, bandwidth scaling, and memory placement research for large language model inference.

2026
kvcache.io

kvcache.io

Interactive visualization of KV cache bandwidth scaling across GPU architectures and transformer models.

2025

Linux Large Block Sizes

NVMe QLC enablement through XFS large block size support in the Linux kernel.

2018
kdevops

kdevops

Linux kernel development and testing automation framework.

2017

OSHWA Board

Board Member of the Open Source Hardware Association.

2015

Linux Kernel Backports

Backport automation for Linux kernel drivers.

2008

CRDA

Central Regulatory Domain Agent for wireless regulatory compliance.

Current Focus

My work historically focused on Linux kernel development and systems infrastructure. Recently my research and focus has shifted toward the systems side of large-scale AI inference, particularly memory bandwidth constraints, KV cache architectures, and inference efficiency.

Education

2013

R&D Collaboration

Inria — Coccinelle backporting research

2003

B.S. Computer Science

Rutgers University

Contact

Email: info@mcgrof.com GitHub: github.com/mcgrof Blog: www.do-not-panic.com