Game-Like Design Tools for EDA

My research team and I have developed the following educational and research tools with the generous support from the National Science Foundation.

UNTANGLED

We believe that the next generation of mapping algorithms developed for custom domain-specific architectures will exhibit pattern recognition, the ability to learn from experience, and identification of creative solutions, all of which are human characteristics.  People excel at navigating complex and dynamically changing situations, recognizing recurring patterns, and identifying potential opportunities.  We have developed an interactive mapping game, Untangled to uncover human mapping strategies. From our observations, player interviews, and the resulting database of good mappings, we have developed several new algorithms that outperform long-term standards.

SmartBricks / UNTANGLEDII:Unbound

Custom domain-specific architectures are very promising for creating designs that are highly optimized to the needs of a particular application domain. However, it is extremely difficult to find optimal tradeoffs in designing a new architecture, or even to fully understand the design space. Therefore, there is a great need to develop an optimum design framework that allows designers to explore the design space efficiently and identify efficient architectures quickly for an application domain.  We have developed a highly visual design environment, SmartBricks / UntangledII:Unbound for designing and exploring custom domain-specific architectures quickly and efficiently. 

UNTANGLEDIII

UNTANGLEDIII is a highly interactive design environment designed to solve large and complex mapping problems. When the problem gets very challenging for a single player to solve, we provide a community play version of the game that allows players to build upon other players’ solutions. Our gaming environment is broadly accessible and is easier to play with light training. 

UNTANGLEDIV

UNTANGLEDIV is an interactive design environment designed to explore fault-tolerant and low energy custom reconfigurable architectures. The game offers in-depth tutorials over the variety of gameplay elements as well as give players insight on how the game elements relate to the critical design concerns of reconfigurable architectures, such as, power, area, and fault tolerance.