Luis Chamberlain

@mcgrof

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

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
Worked on file system development and kernel maintenance.
Jul 2018 – Oct 2019
Principal Engineer
State Street
Storage architecture for Causeway Data Lake and Kubernetes deployments.
Jan 2014 – Jul 2018
Linux Kernel Engineer
SUSE Labs
Xen pvops migration, XFS maintainer.
Apr 2008 – Dec 2013
Senior Linux Kernel Developer
Qualcomm Atheros
15th top corporate Linux kernel contributor during this period.
May 2006 – Apr 2008
Software Engineer
Rutgers WINLAB
Wireless drivers and regulatory frameworks.
Earlier
Various Roles
Merrill Lynch, Vonage, Rutgers
AVP Global Tech, Security Engineer, Systems Programmer.

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