STANFORD, Calif. Oct. 6, 1997, Improving the reliability
of computing systems by
using advanced circuitry that can reconfigure itself on the fly is the
goal of a new $2.4 million research
project at the Stanford Center for Reliable Computing (SCRC).
SCRC will work with scientists from Quickturn Design Systems of
Mountain View, Calif., and the
University of Texas-Austin on the new three-year development program,
which is funded by the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The name of the project is
ROAR (Reliability Obtained by Adaptive Reconfiguration).
The U.S. Department of Defense is particularly interested in using
adaptive computing for relatively inaccessible
systems that operate in harsh and unusual environments, including the
battlefield and outer space. Potential applications
include automatic target recognition, and signal and image processing.
Executing such applications on adaptive
hardware has the potential for substantially reducing system cost by
replacing expensive, custom-made components
with commercial, off-the-shelf varieties.
SCRC researchers realized that an adaptive system's ability to
reconfigure itself should be capable of compensating
for the higher failure rate likely to occur when commercial chips are
subjected to severe conditions. So they submitted
a proposal to DARPA designed specifically to determine if such a system
can in fact detect and locate its own
hardware defects, rapidly reconfigure itself to avoid them, and
continue to function satisfactorily.
"To date, little work has been done in the area of dependability of
adaptive systems," said Edward J. McCluskey,
professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford
University. He directs SCRC and is the principal
investigator on the project.
Engineering Research Associate LaNae Avra and Consulting Associate
Professor Nirmal Saxena from SCRC will
serve as project leaders. The other key participants are Michael R.
Butts, an emulation architect for Quickturn, and
professor Nur Touba from the University of Texas-Austin.
An adaptive computing system is a custom computer that can
automatically reconfigure itself in response to rapidly
changing environmental and computational requirements. Such a computer
is made possible by a special kind of
integrated circuit, called a field programmable device (FPI).
The electrical pathways in FPDs can actually be routed by an onboard
controller. Thus a system built with them can
be designed to optimize itself for different conditions, including
failures in the field. Low-cost, commercial FPDs are
readily available, but have not been extensively applied to military
applications.
SCRC has been performing state-of-the-art research concerning the
design and evaluation of reliable, testable and
maintainable computer systems since the early 1970s.
(continued) |
