The evolution of Very Large Scale Integration
technology has changed the digital and computing systems
design process dramatically. The impact of this technology
has been genuine on all levels of design: algorithmic,
functional, structural, logical, circuit and layout. VLSI
has special and unique features which necessitate a fresh
look at the design techniques and methods. New design
strategies are required based on the coordination among
the functional definition, the architecture, the circuit
design and the physical layout implementation. Moreover,
the design process of the electronic systems using printed
circuit boards has also changed. The main theme of the
new design strategies is integration.
A well equipped integrated digital systems
laboratory is a vital resource necessary to cope with
the new trends for both teaching and research in the Center.
Such a laboratory has three major roles: to support research
projects in VLSI, testing, and silicon compilers; to support
experimentation and prototyping in the digital and computing
system projects such as: multi-processor systems, fault-tolerance
and applications of parallel/distributed architectures;
to develop an integrated design environment for ASICs
for image and video processing applications.
Established in 1985, the VLSI Research
Group, part of The Center
for Advanced Computer Studies (CACS), includes graduate
students working in the area of VLSI design and its related
topics under the guidance of Dr. Magdy A. Bayoumi. We
are currently working on projects in VLSI circuits, low-power
design techniques, reconfigurable computing, CAD tools,
and digital design.
The VLSI Laboratory is equipped with
a Sun SPARC fileserver and 6 Sun Blade 2000 workstations.
The lab also contains several PC's, HP Plotter, printer,
and a probe station. This equipment combined with the
CAD tools and libraries, allows us to take designs from
HDL, schematic, or other level to completion for SoC designs.
The FPGA laboratory is equipped with
many FPGA prototyping boards, SoC boards, DSPs, and PC's
to allow for prototyping and other tasks.
