System- and VLSI-Design
Since the early 80's our institute has been member of different
research activities and projects dealing with system- and VLSI-design.
During this period our institute worked within different domains
in integrated circuit design:
- Innovative VLSI-compatible computer architectures
The technique of large-scale system integration often enables
cheap and efficient solutions through unconventional architectures,
especially for tasks with real-time requirements.
Status: ongoing work
- Seamless Designflow for Hardware/Software-Codesign
Current embedded systems are usually implemented as so-called
hardware/software systems. For this purpose, the task is divided into
sub-tasks which are then processed either by hardware modules or software
modules. The design process of such hardware/software systems presents
new challenges, as on the one hand the systems to be developed are very
complex, on the other hand the cyclical dependency of hardware and software
components has to be resolved. A newly devised design process based on the
system description languale SystemC, which especially takes the problem of
reusing existing models in C into account, is intended to support the
modelling of the system on several layers of abstraction.
Status: completed
- Self-monitoring and fault-tolerant circuits
With the increasing complexity of circuits, testing for manufacturing
defects as well as supervising the correct function during operation is
getting increasingly difficult. This problem can be solved with special
circuit structures. We worked on methods to discover such structures
algorithmically.
Status: completed
- CAD for VLSI: Development of Design Tools
Several tools have been developped, as they were required for concrete
design tasks but were not part of the available software packages.
Status: completed
The "VHDL-Server" contains useful links, information, models and tools
for the hardware description language.
An introduction to our design software:
from the public domain design system and simulator Chipmunk up to
state-of-the-art commercial design systems like Cadence or Synopsys
toolchains.
Through projects like
EUROPRACTICE
numerous designs have been developed and more than 20 have been
fabricated. We present a selection of the architectures developed at our
institute and the ICs we designed, with short descriptions or hints
regarding further information.
