The UCR Dalton Project

IP-Based Embedded System Design


The Dalton project focuses on the design of Intellectual Property (IP, or core) based embedded computing systems, i.e., systems-on-a-chip. Its present focus is on a "parameterized system-on-a-chip design" approach. In this approach, an application, such as a digital camera, is designed first by selecting an existing reference design consisting of a collection of predesign processor-level components (cores), second by repeatedly configuring the programmable parts of those cores for the desired application (e.g., writing software and setting parameter values) and executing the design to verify functionality, and finally by generating final chip. Our current emphasis is on devising a methodology and tools to support the exploration of the impact of various parameter values (e.g., cache size, bus size, DMA block transfer size, arbiter schemes, etc.) on design metrics like power and performance, so that a designer can "tune" the architecture to a specific application (and vice-versa). We are also working on developing new architectural constructs specifically intended for such tuning, as well as methods for an architecture to tune itself. The project is being carried out in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, Riverside, under the direction of Prof. Frank Vahid. The project is named after the chemist John Dalton.

Overview

Releases

We are releasing some of the items that we've developed as part of the project, with the hopes they will be useful to others.

Publications

Here you'll find online versions of most publications stemming from the Dalton project.

A couple other release items

These items are not as robust as the releases above, but you still might find them useful.

Synopsys Tutorial

Team Members

References

These are mostly for our own internal use, but you're welcome to look at them. This work has been supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation (CCR-9811164, CCR-9876006 and CCR-0203829). NSF-required disclaimer: Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recomendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF)."

Comments or questions can be sent to dalton@cs.ucr.edu

March 2001