Synthesis and Mapping for Application-Specific Processor Networks

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

Proposal ID: 0903541 PI name: Cong, Jason Inst.:U of Cal Los Angeles Title: Synthesis and Mapping for Application-Specific Processor Networks Abstract: The electronic industry is facing great challenge in terms of design complexity and productivity. Today?s complex system-on-a-chip (SOC) design has over one billion transistors and requires many man-years to design, resulting prohibitively high design cost. The goal of this project is to significantly improve the design productivity for electronic systems to enable cost-efficient innovation. In this proposal the PIs explore the concept of using a collection of application-specific processors as a general platform for design and implementation of a domain-specific SOC which can be used for multiple applications in a common domain to amortize the design time and cost. Such a platform may consist of a number of fixed and customizable processors, customized logic blocks, field-programmable logic blocks, and a customizable network-on-chip. Effectively, the PIs are extending the standard cell-based methodology for application-specific integrated circuit designs to the application-specific processor-based design methodology for embedded system designs. The proposed design methodology will significantly raise the level of design abstraction, in turn improve the electronic design productivity and cost, and enable cost-efficient innovation. This project also includes the integration of research and education ? the project will expose the new concepts and research results from this project to graduate students and upper-division undergraduate students via new courses and individual studies. The integrated research and education program is also designed to attract underrepresented students via partnership with other campus organizations focused on diversity, such as the UCLA Center for Excellence in Engineering and Diversity and the Society of Woman Engineers.