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Research Facilities at the Center for Semicustom Integrated Systems
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Research at the CSIS is conducted within two laboratories, the Integrated Circuit Laboratory, and
the Systems Integration Laboratory. Although the two laboratories occupy separate areas, they
work together on many projects, and their research often overlaps.
The CSIS has approxiamately 2,500 square feet of research laboratory space containing more than
$25 million in research equipment (both hardware and software). The CSIS facilities provide a
complete environment for the design, fabrication, and testing of prototype analog and digital systems.
The design process is supported by numerous state-of-the-art design capture and simulation tools which
run on a network of approxiamately 30 Sun SPARC10 and SPARC20 class workstations. A core electronic
design software suite is provided by Mentor Graphics Corporation which offers the highest degree
of product integration for electronic technologies currently available. Example Mentor products
available include the Design Architect for schematic capture, Quick VHDL for VHDL simulation, and
Autologic for logic synthesis. The Autologic synthesis output can be targeted to a MOSIS
compatible IC layout for which full design rule checking and simulation is available through the
Magic toolset, or to several FPGA types for which vendor supplied layout and programming tools
are available.
Integrated Circuit Laboratory
In the Integrated Circuit Laboratory,
Synopsys, Inc. provides logic and behavioral synthesis capabilities with its Design
Compiler and Behavioral Compiler tools. In addition, Cascade Design Automation provides EPOCH for
silicon compilation to the most aggressive IC technologies available through the MOSIS service,
and Actel and Xilinx provide Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) capabilities. The CSIS also
has the complete Vantage VHDL toolset, specifically the Vantage Speed Wave VHDL simulation
system. A 400 DPI Calcomp electrostatic plotter is available for fast high-quality plotting.
An HP 82000-D100 IC tester is available within CSIS to test FPGAs and fabricated ASICs. The
HP 82000 is an extremely versatile tester with a timing-per-pin architecture allowing a
designer to perform at-speed tests at up to 100 Mhz using the same test vectors used in
simulation during the design phases.
The Systems Integration Laboratory
The CSIS Systems Integration Laboratory emphasizes the implementation of proof-of-concept
and pre-production prototypes for commercial products. The laboratory consists of five
state-of-the-art electronic design/test benches,
each outfitted with high speed logic analyzer and digital storage oscilloscope, among other
traditional bench test equipment.
The lab also features a surface mount reflow station to allow
prototypes to be constructed with fine pitch surface mount components.
Interactive test software is available to control equipment via the IEEE 488 bus. Logic
analyzers have direct Ethernet connections for downloading test vectors directly from Mentor
Graphics applications to test prototype systems. SIL research has led to the development
of numerous patented technologies.
Last Modified: Jan. 13, 1997
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