In 2007, Prof. Xu joined the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering in Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He established Big Data System Lab, Xilinx-HKUST Joint Lab, and OPTICS (Optical/Photonic Technology for Interconnected Computing System) Lab. He currently serves as the Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems and IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration Systems. He served on the steering committees, organizing committees, and technical program committees of many international conferences, including DAC, DATE, ICCAD, CASES, ICCD, CODES+ISSS, NOCS, HiPEAC, ASP-DAC, etc.

Prof. Xu is awarded IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Contributor as a Charter Member in 2021. He was an ACM Distinguished Speaker and an IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor. He and his students received Best Paper Award from the International Symposium on Memory Systems in 2023, IEEE Technical Committee on VLSI Best Paper Award of ISVLSI in 2018, Best Paper Award from IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI in 2009, and Best Poster Award from AMD Technical Forum and Exhibition in 2010.