(MAPLD Conference)
INVITED SPEAKERS
Talk A0: Dennis Andrucyk
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
"Achieving the Earth Science Vision"
Papers/A0_Andrucyk.ppt
In the not too distant future, knowledge
of the Earth-Sun system will be achieved through a web of sensors integrated as an
advanced neural network. It is analogous to the human nervous system in sensing and
responding to stimuli, serving as an extension of the human senses and intelligence.
Millions of sensors will reside in and on the Earth's surface, in the oceans, on the land,
and in the atmosphere. Hundreds of satellites in constellations and formations in space
view the Earth-Sun from a wide variety of vantagepoints; from low Earth orbit to the
Earth-Sun libration points.
The system is interconnected into an advanced network, where sensor to sensor contact as well as contact to neural nodes on the ground and in space, form a Solar System Wide Web (SSWW). It provides a plug and play "anywhere/anytime" information system infrastructure by bridging and augmenting commercial, government, and international resources. It enables completely new ways of looking at the Earth-Sun system. For example, it allows the generation of retrospective and prospective MRI-like tomographic visualizations of the interior of the Earth, the oceans, the atmosphere and the magnetosphere. The system allows real-time direction and adaptation of observational assets to optimize data needed for response and forecasting. It has interaction among sensing and neural nodes to allow 'learning' to adapt the network. The sensors are programmable and re-configurable as units or as fleets to adapt to a wide range of changing observational needs. Any user can combine information from the libraries and from the sensorweb and dynamically re-configure the sensorweb or its components to form 'virtual instruments'. Scientists will no longer wait years for a flight opportunity. Information, and ultimately knowledge will be readily available, and inexpensive.
Talk B0: John Birkner
VP, Co-founder, QuickLogic Corp
"From Simple PALs to High-Speed, High-Density Leading Edge FPGA's, Their Technologies
and Applications"
Papers/B0_Birkner.ppt
Born in the decade of 1970’s to reduce 54/74 TTL logic chip count,
programmables empowered design engineers with a "design your own chip"
methodology. Using standard, off-the-shelf product, the engineers’ PAL enabled
multiple-spin, design exploration, squeezing maximum functionality into single PCBs,
exemplified in design-wins such as the Apple Macintosh and Ms. PACMAN. The vision of early
PLDs was to use memory technology to implement logic, allowing concise Boolean equations
to customize glue-logic functions, compared to net-lists of gates strung out over multiple
schematic pages. When this PLA, sum-of-product-term array pushed the limits of power and
density, FPGAs emerged to increase flexibility/density and decrease power by employing
extravagant use of true, 2-terminal switch technology, interconnecting seas of logic cells
in gate-array fashion. As gates now become “free”, programmables are tuning-up
IP core and embedded standard product IP core functions for ready-to-use bus-interface,
processor and DSP applications. Will programmables succeed in winning their ultimate
challenge . . . the race to system-on-chip?
Talk C0: Janet L. Barth
NASA/GSFC
"An Overview of the Radiation Environment for Spaceflight Electronics"
Papers/C0_Barth.ppt
The objective of the overview is to provide an understanding of the
components of the radiation environment that must be considered when assessing the risk of
flying programmable technologies in aerospace systems. Topics that will be covered are: a
brief description of solar processes as they pertain to the trapped and transient
radiation levels in the near-Earth region; a description of the major components of the
radiation environments that are hazardous to electronics, including measurements of
particle populations; and a review of the models used to define these environments for
engineering applications.
Today’s flight systems are designed with greatly reduced built-in
shielding, while at the same time, using parts that are more radiation sensitive. This
approach relies on accurate, application specific definitions of the radiation
environment, driving the need for radiation models with lower uncertainty factors. In the
past two years, new environment models have become available that claim accuracy of 25% or
better. The use and application of these models will be discussed.
Talk D0: Jose Munoz
DARPA
The speaker is the Program Manager for ACS in DARPA'S Information Technology
Office (ITO). ACS is in its second year of a five year anticipated effort
"DARPA'S Adaptive Computing Systems (ACS) Program"
Papers/D0_Munoz.ppt
This talk will present DARPA's Adaptive Computing Systems (ACS) program:
Motivations
Goals
Principal challenges/metrics
What has been/is being accomplished
What needs to be done
Lessons learned
Participants/Products
Roadmap
ACS Challenge Problems.
Adaptive Computing Systems will enable the creation of hardware circuitry, using software, at runtime. Instead of creating an automatic target recognition system in software, a hardware instantiation is created using conventional programming languages. Indeed, it's full potential can be realized when the hardware is reconfigured "on-the-fly". This will provide the performance benefits of hardware with the flexibility of software.
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