SHF: Small: Visual Architectures: Engaging Crowds in Design and Discovery for Custom Reconfigurable Devices

University Of North Texas, Denton TX

Investigators

Abstract

Custom reconfigurable computing platforms offer low power, high performance, high efficiency, and increased redundancy tailored to the needs of a specific application domain. The ability to successfully create these highly customized domain-specific architectures offers tremendous advantages, including orders of magnitude power savings, longer battery lives, smaller, faster, more robust devices, and a shorter time to market. However, making extreme customization an integral part of the design process requires design to be significantly simpler to create novel, out of the box architectures that directly address the requirements of a specific domain. This challenge can be divided into three specific areas: (1) discover fast, efficient algorithms that allow for rapid design space exploration; (2) increase participation and widen the community by promoting computational thinking among non-scientists and non-engineers; and (3) educate the next generation of custom chip designers through innovative visual frameworks. Effective multiplayer and cooperative games will be developed in this project that allow teams of players to collaboratively solve mapping and design problems of much larger scope and complexity. In this respect the project also involves members if underrepresented groups in a major way. This research is centered around the idea of developing Visual Architectures to address the challenges outlined above. More specifically, the project involves: (a) creating a highly visual, game-like design environment, thus making complex architecture and mapping problems accessible leading to greater engagement and significantly increasing participation; (b) analyze the vast amounts of data generated through the widening player community to discover better, more efficient automated algorithms; (c) employ the interactive platforms thus created to educate the next generation of chip designers and build their skills and intuitions.