SHF: Small: Rethinking CAD for System-Level Design via Interactivity, Learning, and Collaboration

SHF：小型：通过交互性、学习和协作重新思考 CAD 的系统级设计

• 批准号: 1527821
• 负责人: Luca Carloni
• 金额: $ 45万
• 依托单位: Columbia University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-06-15 至 2020-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1527821&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SHF; Small; Rethinking; CAD; System

In a zeal to pack more transistors into a single integrated circuit, the semiconductor industry has produced many generations of electronic products that are increasingly more powerful and less expensive resulting in massive expansion of information and communication technologies with economic benefits that are estimated as a large part of global productivity growth during the recent decades. A continuous stream of innovations across the three main semiconductor technology areas lies at the root of this success story: (i) device and manufacturing, (ii) circuits and architectures, and (iii) Computer-Aided Design (CAD) methodologies and tools. Recent innovations in the first two areas make it possible to envision new generations of products that are stronger in computational power and richer in functional capabilities. The research enabled by this project, attempts to undertake corresponding innovations in the third area mentioned above. A core part of this program is the development of a new senior-level undergraduate course that will engage the students in working together on a semester-long project with the infrastructure support for collaborative engineering provided by the new CAD environment. Current effort of designing state-of-the-art integrated circuits, suffers from shortcomings that characterize current CAD flows, e.g., the lack of support for exploring the design space across its hardware and software components in search of better solutions; the limited capabilities in optimizing simultaneously multiple components at the system level; and the big learning curve and long execution times that many tools require. This project will investigate a new generation of CAD methodologies and tools. Specifically, the research team will develop a new environment for System-Level Design that is highly interactive, exalts the designers' experience, inspires their creativity, and promotes continuous collaboration across the engineering team. The proposed approach leverages recent work on supervised and compositional design-space exploration, and the application of learning methods to assist designers in the use of advanced high-level synthesis tools.

为了将更多的晶体管封装到单个集成电路中，半导体行业已经生产了多代电子产品，这些产品的功能越来越强大且价格越来越便宜，从而导致信息和通信技术的大规模扩展，其经济效益估计占很大一部分近几十年来全球生产率的增长。跨越三个主要半导体技术领域的持续创新是这一成功故事的根源：(i) 器件和制造，(ii) 电路和架构，以及 (iii) 计算机辅助设计 (CAD) 方法和工具。最近在前两个领域的创新使得人们可以设想计算能力更强、功能更丰富的新一代产品。 本项目的研究试图在上述第三个领域进行相应的创新。 该计划的核心部分是开发一门新的高级本科课程，该课程将让学生在新的 CAD 环境提供的协作工程基础设施支持下共同完成一个为期一个学期的项目。 当前设计最先进的集成电路的努力存在着当前 CAD 流程的缺点，例如，缺乏对跨硬件和软件组件探索设计空间以寻求更好的解决方案的支持；在系统级别同时优化多个组件的能力有限；许多工具需要很大的学习曲线和很长的执行时间。该项目将研究新一代 CAD 方法和工具。具体来说，研究团队将为系统级设计开发一个高度互动的新环境，提升设计师的经验，激发他们的创造力，并促进整个工程团队的持续协作。所提出的方法利用了监督和组合设计空间探索的最新工作，以及学习方法的应用来帮助设计人员使用先进的高级综合工具。

项目成果

Cross-ISA machine instrumentation using fast and scalable dynamic binary translation

• DOI: 10.1145/3313808.3313811
• 发表时间: 2019-04
• 期刊: Proceedings of the 15th ACM SIGPLAN/SIGOPS International Conference on Virtual Execution Environments
• 作者: E. G. Cota;L. Carloni