Methodologies for rapid design, validation and emulation of integrated digital systems


The aim of this research activity is the study and the development of methodologies for the design, validation and emulation of integrated digital systems emphasizing the quick turn-around time. This activity is mainly divided into two parts: the design of application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and the design of the complex boards in which they will be included. In the first part of the activity efferent methodology approaches are used, all based upon high level description languages (VHDL, CHDL, Verilog) which support different technologies such as standard-cells, sea-of-gates, FPGA. Using a standard-cells technology a chip-set for a parallel architecture dedicated to classification problems using the k-Nearest-Neighbor algorithm ( KNN) has been implemented. A framework for an aided design of sea-of-gates integrated circuits is also under development, with which three devices for image processing conforming to the H.261 CCITT standard has been fabricated. FPGA are used only for the emulation and rapid development of prototypes. As the second part of the activity prototyping boards based on programmable interconnecting matrixes are being studied as a tool for validating both system and ASICs under development. A key factor is the study and development of a framework for software simulation and hardware emulation allowing the validation of systems made up of both hardware parts and virtual ones whose behavior is described using a hardware high level description language. Using this technique two boards have been developed, one for OCR applications based on the chip-set described above, and another one for the acquisition, coding and transmission of images according to the H.261 CCITT standard.

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