CRI: IAD Acquisition of High-Performance Multi-Field Programmable Gate Array Platform

纠错编码和密码学对数字通信和存储系统的可靠性和安全性起着重要的作用，数字信号处理可以从噪声背景中提取有用的信号。我们在这些系统的VLSI架构设计领域的研究是连接理论进步和有效硬件实现的桥梁。目前，我们的研究能力受到缓慢的软件模拟和缺乏原型设计和仿真平台的严重限制。在本项目中，我们提出收购CHIPit铱版V4现场可编程门阵列（FPGA）平台。该平台提供了极大的灵活性，可处理多达400万个专用集成电路（ASIC）门的设计能力。该平台具有很大的灵活性和大容量，可以在合理的时间内对通信系统进行仿真，并在实际硬件中对复杂系统进行原型设计。可重构FPGA平台将软件设计的简单性与高速大容量性能相结合。此功能使我们能够克服模拟和评估日益复杂的通信和加密系统的限制，并在实时实现中验证我们的设计。具体来说，铱星FPGA平台将在以下方面帮助我们的研究。首先，它将显著提高我们对纠错码的模拟能力。其次，它将允许我们对大型系统进行原型设计，例如软判决Reed-Solomon解码器，并行长BCH编码器，密码应用和心电图（ECG）信号提取。第三，它将帮助我们找到设计中的硬件实现瓶颈，否则从模拟中是看不见的。强大的教育成分也融入了这个计划。此次收购所带来的研究成果将有助于新课程的开发。此外，该项目将为学生提供硬件实施的实践经验，并增加工程中代表性不足的群体的参与。

CRI: IAD: Acquisition of High-Performance Multi-FPGA PlatformXinmiao ZhangError-correcting coding and cryptography play important roles in the reliability and security of digital communication and storage systems, and digital signal processing can extract useful signals from noisy backgrounds. Our research in the area of VLSI architecture design for these systems serves as a bridge connecting theoretical advancements to their efficient hardware implementations. Currently, our research capability is seriously limited by slow software simulations and the lack of platforms for prototyping and emulation of our designs. In this project, we proposed to acquire a CHIPit Iridium Edition V4 Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) platform. This platform offers great flexibility and handles design capacities of up to 4 million Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) gates. The great flexibility and large capacity of this platform facilitates simulating communication systems in a reasonable time and prototyping complicated systems in real hardware. The reconfigurable FPGA platform combines the simplicity of software design with high-speed and large-capacity performance. This feature allows us to overcome the limitations on simulating and evaluating the increasingly complicated communication and cryptography systems, as well as verify our designs in real time implementations. Specifically, the Iridium FPGA platform will aid our research in the following ways. First it will significantly increase our simulation capability for error-correcting codes. Secondly, it will allow us to prototype large scale systems, such as soft-decision Reed-Solomon decoders, parallel long BCH encoders, cryptographic applications and electrocardiogram (ECG) signal extraction. Thirdly, it will help us to find the hardware implementation bottlenecks in the design, which are otherwise invisible from simulations. Strong educational components are also integrated in this plan. The research results enabled by the proposed acquisition will contribute to the development of a new course. In addition, this project will provide students with hands-on experience on hardware implementation, as well as increase the participation of underrepresented groups in engineering.