Type of Talk: UTCS Colloquium Architecture

Speaker/Affiliation: Zvonko Vranesic/University of Toronto

Date/Ti

me: Tuesday May 20 2008 10:30 a.m.

Location: ACES 2.402

Host: Derek Chiou

Talk Title: Developments in FPGA Technology
<

br>Talk Abstract:
The talk will address the present state of Field Pro

grammable Gate Array (FPGA) technology. This technology has advanced to the
point where FPGA chips are now used to implement entire high-performance d

igital systems. Most advanced FPGA devices can implement millions of equiv

alent logic gates and may contain megabytes of memory cells. FPGAs are wide

ly used
in applications such as automotive video processing communica

tions computers medical and industrial test equipment.

Huge advanc

es have been made during the past few years in both the implementation of F

PGA devices and the CAD tools needed to use these devices in practical appl

ications. Continuing quest for increased performance is now accompanied by

efforts to reduce the power consumption of FPGAs. The most important factor

s are the reduction in feature size the architecture
of the FPGA devic

es and the ability of CAD tools to realize efficient designs. These issues
will be discussed as seen by an academic who is now working
in FPGA i

ndustry.

Speaker Bio:
Zvonko Vranesic received his B.A.Sc. M.A.

Sc. and Ph.D. degrees all in Electrical Engineering from the University

of Toronto. From 1963 to 1965
he worked as a design engineer with the N

orthern Electric Co. Ltd. in Bramalea Ontario. In 1968 he joined the Unive

rsity of Toronto where he is now a Professor Emeritus in the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering. During the 1978-79 academic year he

was a Senior Visitor at
the University of Cambridge England and durin

g 1984-85 he was at the University of Paris 6. From 1995 to 2000 he served
as Chair of the Division of Engineering Science at the University of Toron

to. Presently he is working at the Altera Toronto Technology Center as a

member of Altera’s University Program group.

His research inte

rests have included computer architecture and
field-programmable VLSI te

chnology.

He is a coauthor of five books: Fundamentals of Digital Lo

gic with VHDL Design 3rd ed.; Fundamentals of Digital Logic with Verilog

Design 2nd ed.; Computer Organization 5th ed.; Microcomputer Structures

; and Field-Programmable Gate Arrays.

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The Computer Architec

ture Seminar Series is sponsored jointly by the
Departments of Computer

Science and Electrical & Computer Engineering
and is supported by a gra

nt from AMD.
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