| Summary: |
This project aims at developing compiler techniques and coarse-grained reconfigurable array architectures to substantially reduce the development time in the embedded and reconfigurable computing domains achieving performance demands. Mobile Robotics will be used as the main focus of application.
We believe this project will improve the Portuguese competences on compilation of software programming languages targeting reconfigurable computing platforms, and on reconfigurable array architectures. These competences can be very important in actual and near future contexts since embedded systems are becoming prominent and FPGA technology tends to achieve more efficient systems, according to a number of requirements.
Embedded systems create a broad range of opportunities that are not being attained by the Portuguese industry and academia. Portugal needs to acquire competences in several aspects related to embedded systems. However, we need to change the actual scenario, dominated by services and software development with no competitive value and weak intellectual property. We really think Portugal may have a word in the actual and future scenarios, if strong knowledge is enforced by several years of research. This can really be the case in embedded systems based on reconfigurable computing architectures (e.g., using FPGA technology). Some Portuguese companies with international impact have already felt the importance of performance acceleration and methodologies to satisfy time-to-market issues that compel the need to more advanced systems, preferably implemented using high abstraction levels (typically the ones already used by software). We believe the mobile robotics scenario will give us the experimental setup and the learning lessons we need to face on complex embedded system applications. |