Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Research

Among the research topics of the Section of Electronics and Computers of Physics Dept. of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, is the development of Application Specific Instruction Set Processors (ASIPs) and Reconfigurable Instruction Set Processors (ASIPs) mainly for multimedia and telecom applications. To achieve the above goals our research includes the development of new architectures, their description by HDLs and implementation on FPGAs, the development of methods for extending core processors with new instructions/operations and hardware units, and the development of software tools to support the above.

Concerning the use of Tensilica cores, the goal is to get a deep experience on these cores and Tensilica's design methodology, to be included in the above research topics.

For that purpose two post-graduated students have undertaken to develop (for their master thesis - Msc Thesis) a multicore system on which a multimedia application (JPEG) will be executed. The system will be composed by queues and Tensilica cores properly extended to meet the requirements of the application. Afterwards, and as well will be familiar with Tensilica's flow, a more complex application will be implemented. The above work started three months ago.

Also, a mid-term goal (for the next academic year 2008/2009 or probably two year after) is to include in a lesson entitled "System Synthesis" of our post-graduate studies using some aspects of Tensilica's design methodology and small projects using Tensilica's tools.

Courses and Curriculum

Our research team is focusing in the area of ASIPs and RISPs. Research includes primarily the design of novel architectures in these fields, but also design of tools for Automated Instruction set extensions and compiler support for these architectures. This work can be found in the international literature (the department's site includes detail publication lists). Specifically related publications include:

• A novel Zero-Overhead-Loop-Counter, which has been published in the IEE Proceedings - Computers & Digital Techniques
• Automated Instruction-Set Extension of Embedded Processors published in Proceedings of the IEEE 16th International Conference on Application-specific Systems
• A novel RISP architecture published in the proceedings of ARC2005 and its compiler support accepted for publication in the RAW2006 proceedings.

The program of post-graduate studies of our department includes among others courses related to: digital logic design, computer architecture, system synthesis, VLSI.

The Physics department of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, has licensed Tensilica's Xtensa processor generator tools.

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki