ECE Professor Researching Chip That Matches Hardware to Software With DARPA Grant

Usually, matching hardware with software can require a group of specialists, but thanks to an $820,000 DARPA grant, electrical and computer engineering associate professor Ali Akoglu is helping design a chip that could do it automatically and more quickly.

Akoglu is working with researchers from Arizona State University, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Michigan, and from companies Arm, EpiSys and GDMS, to solve this problem by developing systems on chips, or SoCs, that allow software developers to focus their efforts on designing algorithms and applications, not on matching them to chip structures.

DARPA wants the chips to be designed specifically for software radio applications such as cellphones and national security, and to be able to incorporate new applications as technology advances. The organization also wants the systems on chips to be “domain-specific” – that is, still able to complete more than one task, but not so generalized that they sacrifice speed or quality of functions for quantity.