Adaptive Computing Systems

This project is a subcontract under the Adaptive Computing Program of Sanders, a Lockheed Martin Company. The program is funded by the Information Technology Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Principal Investigator: Edward A. Lee
Organization: University of California at Berkeley

Overview

The Ptolemy group is cooperating with Sanders on the development of software for synthesizing configurations of adaptive computing hardware from high-level, abstract descriptions of computations. A near-term result is the ACS domain of Ptolemy Classic, which supports design refinement from dataflow graphs through fixed-point analysis and design, through to FPGA synthesis.

A key feature of the ACS domain is its software architecture supporting the synthesis of different implementations from the same specification. The ACS domain uses the Corona/Core approach, which was created by Jose Pino and Tom Parks while they were at UC Berkeley. In the Corona/Core design, a star has one Interface, named the Corona, and one or more implementations, named Cores.

The ACS domain will help in automating the FPGA design process; it will help in transforming an SDF graph into a reasonable FPGA implementation. Initially, an Annapolis Microsystems Wildforce board will be the primary target.

The first public release of ACS is available in Ptolemy 0.7.1