The University of Bremen’s Computer Science Department has chalked up yet another international success: This time in connection with a PhD thesis submitted by a student member of the computer architecture research group led by Prof. Rolf Drechsler. PhD candidate Hoang Le won a prize for his thesis dealing with the improved design of hardware/software systems.
The background: Modern electronic systems, including everything from washing-machine controls to mobile smartphones, increasingly rely on the intricate interplay between hardware and software. At the start of the design phase it is virtually impossible to draw any clear distinctions between the tasks that have to be performed by hardware, on the one hand, and software, on the other. This is impacting on the way computer scientists set about drawing up the specifications for such systems and their eventual implementation: Whereas in the past the hardware and software components were developed in more or less separate work steps, the modern approach increasingly favors an integrated hardware/software co-design. Dealing with the increased design complexity this entails calls for the application of specialist programming languages like SystemC, for instance. This then makes it possible to carry out simulation and verification tests during the preliminary stages of the design process when the concrete allocation of hardware and software components is not yet clear.
One of the biggest problems is to ensure the correctness of the underlying design. Although considerable progress has been made in respect of the methods used to verify the pure hardware components, making accurate observations on a higher level involving the interaction with (hardware-related) software is still fraught with problems. Hoang Le has been researching innovative verification and simulation procedures for the system design of electronic circuits in an attempt to find a better way to deal with such issues. His research project entitled „Entwicklung eines durchgängigen Verifikationsablaufes für den ESL Entwurf“ [Development of a continuous verification process for ESL design] is funded by the German Research Foundation as a Reinhart Koselleck project. He has already succeeded in elevating formal methods similar to those applied in the design of pure hardware to suit the more complex hardware/software level. The findings caused quite a stir in the scientific community and have led to a number of recent publications and papers for leading conferences and journals.
This success was rewarded during Europe’s most important conference in the field of computer-aided system design, the Design Automation and Test in Europe (DATE for short). Hoang Le received his award from the EDAA (European Design and Automation Association) General Assembly and the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) SIGDA (Special Interest Group on Design Automation) for his groundbreaking PhD project within the context of the conference’s PhD forum. Following a previous award from the Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference last year, this is the second high-level acclaim for Le’s research. The selection committee comprises top level scientists from all over the world. This is the first time that the conference has awarded a prize for the best PhD project.
For further information, please contact:
Universität Bremen
Fachbereich Mathematik / Informatik
AG Rechnerarchitektur
Prof.Dr. Rolf Drechsler
Phone: +49 421 218 63932
email: drechserprotect me ?!uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de
or
Hoang Le
Phone: +49 421 218 63957
email: hleprotect me ?!informatik.uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de
