Areg
Kostanyan

Young and driven third year University of Toronto Electrical and Computer Engineering student with over four years of professional experience in the ECE industry.

Newest project

Zenith, an accelerated processor built from the ground up →

Zenith is a broad project that attempts to implement every piece of a simple computer. Its end goal is to run a quantized small language model all by itself. In order to achieve this, Zenith implements a PCBA, digital logic for the CPU and NPU, an emulator to do native debug, an assembler and C-like compiler for writing userspace programs, a kernel and standard library for helping these programs, and a website that packages the emulator to debug on the web.

At its core is a 32×32 systolic array that enables fast processing of tensor-related instructions. In addition to the memory mapped I/O features such as a VGA framebuffer, PS/2 keyboard and mouse, and SD card persistent storage, Zenith becomes a complete simple computer.

Today Zenith is 2/3rds of the way complete, with further implementation planned for the rest of the summer of 2026. Read the full write-up →

Personal Projects

Zenith →

A 64-bit CPU and NPU, designed from the ground up. Includes a custom ISA, a C-like programming language, a systolic matrix engine for inference, and much more.

C++ · SystemVerilog · Compilers

Tachyon →

A JIT-compiled programming language optimized for mathematical operations // a virtual machine, bytecode, and IR stack built from scratch in C++.

C++ · JIT · x86_64

Nervana →

Neural network evolution in simulated environments — blobs with random brains learn to survive through natural selection, rendered in 2D and 3D with Bevy.

Rust · Bevy · Simulation

NetPBM Parser→

A Haskell parser for the NetPBM image format, supporting plain and binary PPM.

Haskell · Parsing

Work Experience

May 2026 – PresentToronto, ON

Aston Dynamics

Engineering Intern

Developing Aston Dynamics Delta® and TowPilot® electric over hydraulic braking systems, running on a real time embedded stack.

Established an optimized Bluetooth Low Energy protocol layer targeting firmware and mobile devices that models schemas, services, characteristics, permissions, and deterministic Universally Unique Identifier hashes, resulting in standardized communication across all products and increasing throughput 9.5 times.
Engineered a log-to-flash system with ring buffer partitioning, consistent overhead byte stuffing for framing, and automatic boot recovery/analysis, focused on creating persistent logging for offline devices. Refined log times to under an average of 150 microseconds per log.

CRustESP32Bluetooth

Mar 2022 – April 2026Oakville, ON

Gastronomous Technologies

Engineering Intern

For over four years, built the infrastructure behind Gastronomous ChronoGrill® and associated products, working on robotic development, backend implementations, and user interface design.

Wrote embedded software for a bidirectional serialization/deserialization layer for real-time communication of over 1Mbps of data at over 30Hz through WebSockets between constrained hardware and a user interface.
Developed live cloud-based machine monitoring infrastructure with Amazon Web Services with log and metric aggregation, event alert pipelines, and video streaming, resulting in a 75% improvement in incident counting.
Built an internal tool for quickly processing, cleaning, and modifying small computer-generated bill-of-materials lists of over ten thousand entries with Python and Pandas, eliminating around three hours of manual spreadsheet entry labor per week.

Embedded C/C++MQTTPythonROSAWSMySQLPrisma

Read the full write-up →

About

Areg Kostanyan is a third year electrical and computer engineering student at the University of Toronto specializing in Control, Communications and Signal Processing / Photonics and Semiconductor Physics. He started working at a robotics company at 15 years old for free, got an offer a few months after, and has been in the industry ever since.

His range of experience runs from RTL hardware design, to embedded and robotics work, to backend and cloud development. He takes a special interest in cpu architecture, compilers, and applied control systems.

He is currently looking for a professional experience year term (16 months, May 2027 - August 2028) at an electrical and computer engineering company that applies his interests in the day-to-day. His dream would be to do similar work to his projects, at work. Say hello at areg.kostanyan@mail.utoronto.ca.