This instrumentation award is to purchase VLSI design and test equipment dedicated to research in novel chip architectures for parallel processing and graphics. The specific research projects for which the equipment will be used include the development of high level specification, synthesis, and testing tools; the development of a graphics chip for 3D volume visualization; and the development of custom VLSI chips for memory buses in a heterogeneous parallel computing environment. The development of custom VLSI chips is increasingly dependent on access to computer software that aids the designer of the chip. In particular, testing tools are critical so as to allow the testing of chips before they are sold or installed in devices. This award will allow the pruchase of a high speed tester that will experimentally validate such testing tools. The chips to be tested incude a three dimensional graphics custom chip consisting of 256 separate "voxel" processors and a very high speed memory bus chip to be used in the construction of a high speed distributed network of computers.
