The VLSI Design Laboratory, University of Patras, founded in 1986, have long and extensive experience in basic and applied research projects. Research activities cover all aspects of VLSI hardware and system design and optimization. Novelties and breakthroughs are sought both in integrated system design methodologies as well as targeted application domains of high industrial relevance. Current research activities include VLSI systems for telecommunication applications and signal processing, forward error correction, security and cryptography, VLSI systems for video applications, reconfigurable systems and FPGAs, low–power design, high–performance parallel systems, process–variation–tolerant design techniques and architectures, application–specific processor design and optimization, hardware–software co–design and partitioning.

The VLSILAB is staffed by four faculty members, six post doctoral researchers, and 12 PhD students. Furthermore a large number of graduate and undergraduate students are involved in research activities in the context of their diploma and MsC–level theses.

The team is well–equipped with dedicated computational facilities, laboratory equipment and hardware prototyping systems and tools, and complete EDA software design flows, which enable carrying out several large–scale research projects. In addition toits dedicated infrastructure, detailed below, the lab has continuous access to campus–wide and departmental facilities.

The group has extensive experience in the development of baseband hardware systems for telecommunication applications. In the proposedproject the VLSI Design Lab will work on research and development of FEC systems. During the last three years, the group involved in this proposal has successfully completed three research projects, directly related to FEC systems implemented on hardware.

Specifically:

  • Under an industrial contract “VLSI–FEC”, VLSILAB developed a prototype of a novel FEC system implementing iterative decoding of LDPC using various FPGA development boards, including a Virtex–5 VLX330.
  • In the context of the “nexgen miliwave” project, co–financed by Hellenic Funds and by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under the Hellenic National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) 2007–2013, within the Programme “Hellenic Technology Clusters in Microelectronics –Phase–2 Aid Measure,” the group developed a gigabit–rate LDPC–based FEC system for a 60–GHz point–to–point wireless link. Activities carried out by the VLSILAB were the definition of the LDPC codes to be used, hardware implementation of scalable iterative decoders, design of gigabit–rate decoders, functional verification of the baseband chain, using Virtex–7 technology.
  • Under the contract “Fast Flexible FEC”, funded by Antcor S.A, hardware prototypes of several FEC blocks, implementing decoding of convolutional codes and LDPC codes compliant with the IEEE 802.11ac standard, have been successfully designed, implemented, and verified, onto Virtex–5 technology, while novel solutions achieved led to three US patent applications.

On–going funded directly–related research activities include the development of a FEC system for a wireless gigabit–rate point–to–point connection operating in the E Band.

The group has dedicated computing infrastructure: A large number of high–performance PC workstations running windows and linux, prominent among them is a Dell PowerEdge900 server: a sixteen–core machine with 64GB RAM, running 64–bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The group is equipped with necessary tools for testing and digital design debugging: Tektronix TLA7000 Logic analyzer, 68 channels, 8 GHz MagniVu Timing, 450 MHz State Clock equipped with FS2 FPGAVIEW, TLA support for XILINX FPGAS. Also, there is a PGA3 300MHz pattern generator. Prototyping equipment: A variety of development boards and kits based on Spartan 3E, Virtex–4, –5, –6, –7, and Kintex–7devices. The particular boards target embedded systems, DSP, and ASIC prototyping.EDA software: Complete set of tools available via Europractice to support all aspects of electronic design, including HDL model development, synthesis, simulation and verification, timing analysis, power analysis, place, and route. Full Mentor Graphics suite: Complete set of tools for all design procedures ranging from system–level HDL specification to back–end IC development support. Full Cadence IC design flow, including HDL–based front–end tools to IC back–end tools. Synopsys front–end for HDL modeling, synthesis, timing, and power analysis and optimization tools and back–end support.Xilinx tools for FPGA prototyping of embedded systems and ASICs: Vivado, EDK, ISE Foundation, XST synthesis, IMPACT for binary file generation, ILA (Integrated and Logic Analyzer), and Chipscope Pro for FPGA debugging. Model–based system design flows based on Matlab, Simulink from Mathworks, and SystemGenerator from Xilinx.Software tools for architecture exploration and compiler optimizations.