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The focus of this paper is to measure and qualify high-level process variation models by measuring variability on FPGAs. Measurements are done with high spatial resolution and demonstrate how the high-resolution data matches two industry test cases. The benefit of such an approach is that several inexpensive FPGAs, which are normally on the leading edge of technologies compared to ASICs, obviate the need of fabricating many custom test chips. Specifically, our evaluation shows how measurements of an Altera Cyclone II FPGA can be used to derive variability models for several 90nm commercial designs such as the Sun Niagara and Intel Pentium D. Even though the FPGAs and commercial processors are produced by different fabs (TSMC, TI, and Intel, respectively), we find the FPGAs to be very useful for predicting variation in the commercial processors.

Design complexity is rapidly becoming a limiting factor in the design of modern high-performance digital systems. The increasing levels of design effort required to improve and implement critical processor and system structures have led to staggering design costs. As we design ever larger and more complex systems, it is becoming increasingly difficult to estimate how much time it takes to design and verify them. Novel quantitative and optimization approaches are needed to understand and deal with the limiting effects induced by design complexity, which remain for the most part hidden from the architect. To address part of these shortcomings, this work introduces µComplexity and µPCBComplexity, a set of methodologies to measure and estimate design effort for modern processor and PCB (printed circuit board) designs.

Development of the movement and position (MAP) tracking system was motivated by limitations of currently available tags for marine mammals. The MAP tag employs a global positioning system (GPS) receiver to accurately fix an animal’s position when it surfaces and a tri-axial magnetometer and velocity-time-depth recorder to track in three dimensions underwater movements between surfacings. The tag is microprocessor controlled allowing flexibility and user control of sampling regimes. Data are stored in a high capacity datalogger. To minimize the energy budget the GPS receiver is only switched on when the animal nears the surface and switched off when a fix is obtained. The unit is battery-powered, self-contained and capable of deployment on animals descending to 1500 m. By attaching a pinger to the animal it can also be tracked acoustically, allowing calibration of passive acoustic tracking systems. In its current configuration, the MAP tag is designed for deployment on elephant seals, but with relatively minor reconfiguration of the package it could be deployed on many large marine vertebrates. It is anticipated that the capability of the MAP tag will dramatically enhance future studies of marine mammal behavior, navigation, orientation, and foraging. [Work supported by ONR.]