Spring Quarter 1998, Seminar Series


The speakers and topics of seminars that will be held during spring are available here.

The remaining schedule for the quarter, shall be shortly posted on the Web.


MATCH
A Matlab Compilation Environment for Distributed Heterogeneous Adaptive Systems

Dr. Prithviraj Banerjee
Walter P. Murphy Professor,
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Northwestern University,
Illinois, USA.


Abstract

(MATlab Compiler for Heterogeneous computing systems) compiler project is to explore new ways, leveraging recent advancements in compiler technologies, to bridge the gap between high level programming interfaces and the flexibility of the low level control provided by the adaptive computing systems. Towards this end we are implementing and evaluating an experimental prototype of a software system that will take MATLAB descriptions of various embedded systems applications in signal and image processing, and automatically map them on to an adaptive computing environment consisting of field-programmable gate arrays, embedded processors and digital signal processors built from commercial off-the-shelf components. In this talk I will give an overview of the project that has recently been started with DARPA funding. The project is jointly directed by Prof. Prith Banerjee, Prof. Alok Choudhary, Prof. Scott Hauck, and Dr. Nagaraj Shenoy.

Biographical sketch

Dr. Prithviraj Banerjee received his B.Tech. degree in Electronics and Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, in August 1981, and the M.S. and Ph.D degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in December 1982 and December 1984 respectively.

Dr. Banerjee is currently the Walter P. Murphy Chaired Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of the Center for Parallel and Distributed Computing at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Prior to that he was the Director of the Computational Science and Engineering program, and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Dr. Banerjee's research interests are in Parallel Algorithms for VLSI Design Automation, Distributed Memory Parallel Compilers, and Parallel Architectures with an emphasis on Fault Tolerance, and is the author of over 200 papers in these areas. He leads the PARADIGM compiler project for compiling programs for distributed memory multicomputers, and ProperCAD project for portable parallel VLSI CAD applications. He is also the author of a book entitled "Parallel Algorithms for VLSI CAD" published by Prentice Hall, Inc., 1994. He has supervised 25 Ph.D. and 30 M.S. student theses so far.

Dr. Banerjee has received numerous awards and honors during his career. He is the recipient of the 1996 Frederick Emmons Terman Award of ASEE's Electrical Engineering Division sponsored by Hewlett-Packard. He was elected to the Fellow grade of IEEE in 1995. He received the University Scholar award from the University of Illinois for in 1993, the Senior Xerox Research Award in 1992, the IEEE Senior Membership in 1990, the National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigators' Award in 1987, the IBM Young Faculty Development Award in 1986, and the President of India Gold Medal from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, in 1981.



Voxel-based Modeling for Rapid Prototyping

Dr. Vijay Chandru
Computer Science & Automation,
Indian Institute of Science,
India.

Abstract

A voxel, the 3D analog of a pixel, is the elemental volume building block. An array of voxels provides a discretized representation of the space enclosed by it. Volume graphics is based on the premise that the advantages of a voxel representation will lead to the shift from raster graphics to voxel-based graphics just as hardware and software advances propelled raster graphics over vector graphics in the late seventies. We believe that voxel-based geometric modeling is very attractive in the context of mechanical CAD for rapid prototyping (also referred to as stereolithography or layered manufacturing).

In this talk we give a brief outline of research at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, that is attempting to tackle several aspects of voxel-based modeling, including interactive sculpting, virtual machining, and volume representation schemes.

Biographical sketch

Vijay Chandru is a professor of Computer Science at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore where he heads the Perceptual Computing Lab. He obtained his PhD in Operations Research from MIT in 1982. From 1982 to 1992 he served on the faculty of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University. His research interests are in Combinatorial Optimization, Geometric Modeling and Computational Logic.