ITR: Automated Design of Very Large Scale Integrated Biofluidic Chips

70年代大规模集成电路（LSI）的出现为今天的信息技术奠定了基础。同样，生物化学流体处理技术整体一体化的最新进展很可能导致未来生物技术和医学的发展。与集成电路一样，这种非常大规模的集成生物流体芯片（VLSIBC）将需要软件工具来获取设计规范，研究替代设计架构的适用性，然后自动设计目标芯片。此外，还需要定量预测和优化芯片性能的工具。这个跨学科项目涉及来自卡内基梅隆大学四个系和伊利诺伊大学一个系的研究人员，他们正在开发生物流体芯片设计的算法、语言、模型和方法。设想的自动化设计和验证能力将能够处理因微流体集成而引起的生物流体设计复杂性的巨大增长，并将缩短当前的设计-制造-测试循环，以减少交货时间，并使生物流体处理器具有商业可行性。

The advent of large scale integrated (LSI) circuits in the 70s set the foundations for today's information technologies. Similarly, recent advances in the monolithic integration of biochemical fluid-based processing technologies is likely to lead to the development of tomorrow's advances in biotechnology and medicine. As with integrated circuits, such very large scale integrated biofluidic chips (VLSIBC) will need software tools to acquire design specifications, investigate the applicability of alternative design architectures, and then automatically design a target chip. Furthermore, tools for quantitatively predicting and optimizing the chip's performance will be needed.This cross-disciplinary project involving investigators from four departments at Carnegie Mellon and one at the University of Illinois is developing algorithms, languages, models and methodologies for the design of biofluidic chips. The envisoned automated design and verification capabilities will be able to handle the tremendous growth in biofluidic design complexity arising from microfluidic integration and will shorten the current design-fabricate-test loop to reduce the lead time and make biofluidic processors commercially viable.