INDUSTRY

Researchers at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), in collaboration with SRC Computers, Inc., have developed a technique that allows developers to use the MathWorks' Simulink platform to program an SRC reconfigurable computing system. This development enables programmers to use software with which they are already familiar to take advantage of the power of high-performance reconfigurable computing systems. David Meixner, Volodymyr Kindratenko, and David Pointer, researchers in NCSA's Innovative Systems Laboratory, have demonstrated their technique for using Simulink, Xilinx DSP System Generator, and the SRC Carte programming environment to program SRC's portable MAPstation in two recent conference presentations: * Running Simulink-based Designs on SRC-6, the 10th Annual Workshop on High-Performance Embedded Computing (September 2006) * On Using Simulink to Program SRC-6 Reconfigurable Computer, the 9th Military and Aerospace Programmable Logic Devices International Conference (September 2006). The use of Simulink-based designs provides the capability to use the fixed-point numeric type, which is not directly available in the SRC's MAP C language. This leads to reduced FPGA resource use because the programmer can avoid the need to use larger numerical types for problems that require a reduced numerical range. Other benefits include the ability to directly use low-level FPGA resources and access to Xilinx IP cores, such as FFT and CORDIC algorithms. Jon Huppenthal, president and CEO of SRC Computers, Inc., says the company "intends to support this flow with its standard products in the near future." The NCSA team has explored several application areas, including image and radio signal processing and the two-point angular correlation function in cosmology, which are described in a technical report available online. This work was supported by award No. SCI 05-25308 from the National Science Foundation. The cosmology work was done in collaboration with Adam Myers and Robert Brunner from the Department of Astronomy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was funded by NASA grants NAG5-12578, NAG5-12580, and NNG06GH15G.