Research

This page gives a global context of the research areas I am involved in. Students that are interested can contact me for a precise problem definition for a graduation project or a Ph.D. project.

The overall problem is the design of complex embedded systems in state-of-the-art deep submicron IC processes. The picture shows an embedded MIPS core with peripherals in a 0.35 micron process. The problem is management of design complexity. Therefore we are not only interested in the design as such but also in a systematic approach to the problem, i.e. in the design methods. These design methods comprise architecture models, tools and libraries.

First a few words about architectures. This includes hardware as well as software architectures. In the hardware architecture we make a distinction between two levels. The basic building blocks are embedded processors, e.g. embedded CPUs (MIPS or ARM), embedded DSPs or application specific processors. These embedded processors consume an area of only 1 mm. square. Therefore we have to deal with a second level in the architecture where roughly 100 of those processors are arranged in a multiprocessor architecture.

More in detail the following research aspects can be identified at the processor level.

Application specific VLIW architectures with distributed register files
Constraint analysis techniques for code generation for the above architectures
Bit level reconfigurable architectures for the design of application specific units for the above VLIW architectures

More in detail the following research aspects can be identified at the multiprocessor level or top level of the architecture.

Definition of a communication infrastructure (also called backbone) using on-chip circuit and packet switching techniques.
Study of the deep submicron effects related to the above communication infrastructure. More precisely the following aspects need attention: segmented interconnect, point to point connections and asynchronous links
Definition of a software stack for communication e.g. similar to the OSI stack.

In order to steer the above research in the right direction in-home networks are selected as the application driver. This include wired as well as wireless networks over which MPEG4-like content must be transmitted. These are dynamic applications for which the quality of the service is controlled at run time.

More info can be found on the following pages.