TITLE: Provably correct on chip communication

PRESENTER: Karin Avnit, http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/db/staff/info/kavnit.html, kavnit@cse.unsw.EDU.AU

AFFILIATION:School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au

DATE: Monday 17th July 2006

TIME: 12:00:00

PLACE: Meeting room Level 4, K17

ABSTRACT:

Rapid developments in chip design technologies allow for increased
complexity in chip architecture and functionality. Architecting such
chips becomes a task with contradictory goals: On the one hand, short
time to market is essential where life expectancy of a product can be
estimated as no longer than a few months, and on the other, reliability
and quality of a product play a large role in both product reputation
and costs. A widely known approach for complying with both goals is
the use of a System on Chip (SoC) or Network on Chip (NoC) architecture
with pre-designed and pre-verified modules, known as intellectual
properties (IPs). With this module reuse approach, a system can be
built using modules that were developed separately and, in the absence
of module interface standards, modules will often endorse different
interface protocols. For this reason, integration of pre-designed
modules involves protocol compatibility checks, synthesis of a mediator
(when needed) and system verification. These processes are currently
performed manually and are cumbersome, time consuming and error prone.

Though several approaches to hardware protocols mediation have been
proposed, automation of protocol converter synthesis is yet to be
realized. This research focuses on the framework of state based
protocol models and work toward a tool for automatic synthesis of
glue logic to mediate between mismatched hardware interface protocols,
thereby allow for shorter design time and more reliable systems.

BIOGRAPHY OF SPEAKER:

Karin Avnit is a PhD Student at School of Computer Science and
Engineering, University of New South Wales. Karin is currently working
on his PhD topic on "provably correct on-ship communication design"
under supervision of Prof. Arcot Sowmya.

Host:

Arcot Sowmya

Seminar Convenor:

Van Hai Ho