This project is funded under the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, which is designed to provide an opportunity for small business, particularly the small high technology firm, to participate in NSF research. Phase I of the SBIR program serves as a filter to select promising proposals and determine if the firm can do high quality research. Phase II is the principal research project. Phase III is the conversion of the NSF-funded research into commercial applications and technological innovation supported by follow-on private venture capital or other non-federal financing. This Phase II project addresses the need in networked environments to provide quick and efficient application-to-application data transfers between workstations without the overhead of software network protocols. The solution advanced by the principal investigator is to move key software functions from the operating system device driver into hardware and firmware, and by using a packet switch to interconnect the workstations. The Phase I effort developed a preliminary designfor this network, called the FOX Network. Phase II involves constructing a prototype FOX Network, testing to determine network performance, and developing an application for visual demnostration of the benefits of the network. Potential application areas include simulation problems, visualization-intensive applications, and large shared databases.
