Research Projects
Software for reconfigurable devices
At the low-end of the processing scale microcontrollers are interesting examples of what could almost be called a System on a Chip, ie. a single chip which contains a complete computer system. The top-end FPGAs, for example the Xilinix Virtex II Pro, are an exciting example of a high-end processing device. The Xilinx Virtex II Pro has on-board GB/s serial drivers, CPU cores, and memory sitting in a “sea” of FPGA logic. However the configuration or programming, typically with VHDL or Verilog, of these devices is not simple, and VHDL is no longer the most suitable language. We are developing alternatives building off the current state-of-the-art in software engineering, with an emphasis on applications to image processing. This includes investigating and developing tools such as: an Aspected Oriented Language and compiler, refactoring tools, identifying hardware/software patterns and software critics, modelling and analysis using petrinets, and partitioning sequential and parallel code.