Research Description

The EOLAB microelectronics group,part of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of the University of Cagliari, since years have put some effort in reconfigurable architectures and multiprocessor architectures. Our research interest in Tensilica tools resides in the possibility of comparing the already achieved results in this scenario with the achievable ones exploiting the Xtensa processor, its reconfigurability and its customizable ISA.

Moreover, our intent is to adopt Tensilica tools for teaching purposes: we believe indeed that allowing students to face with the advanced features of the Xtensa processor (strong reconfigurability and customizable ISA in particular) would be a valuable plus in their technical education. Our plan is to introduce an amount of hours in our already existing teaching modules in order to make students practice with Tensilica platform; as soon as we'll have gained enough experience with the platform we will establish seminars for PhD students.

Outline of Curriculum and Courses

We currently offer two curses dealing with SoCs architectures, during which students have the possibility to practice with different ISA, namely: Embedded Systems and Digital Systems and Processors, taught by Prof. Luigi Raffo. Both of these teaching modules are aimed at introducing students to the state-of-the-art in digital architectures, presenting theoretical design principles along with a technical insight in practical developing for advanced platforms.

Our undergrad students are by now strongly encouraged to develop final-thesis projects on FPGA prototyping for reconfigurable digital systems, Advanced Interconnection Networks support for MPSoC architectures, as well as, algorithms for real-time DSP applications.

Student/Assistants Outreach

Our research group is composed of one full professor, two assistant professors, 3 post-doc fellows and 7 PhD students. Every year, EOLAB hosts tens of MSc students performing their final thesis in digital electronics. The above mentioned teaching modules are attended in average by 60 students (Digital System and Processors) and 20 students (Embedded Systems).

This year (2008) 20 students from the EOLAB group visited at Tensilica's headquarters in Santa Clara, CA.

University of Cagliari link

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering link

EOLAB Research Group link

Prof. Luigi Raffo