N. Steiner

Publications (2)0 Total impact

• Source

  Available from: psu.edu

  Conference Proceeding: Hardware autonomy and space systems

  N. Steiner, P. Athanas
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  ABSTRACT: Autonomous capability in space systems is rapidly becoming a necessity for continued research and exploration. While these systems have traditionally behaved as passive observers, their remoteness and unique access to unexplored environments will likely result in future systems that behave more like active agents employed on our behalf. We may still determine the larger mission goals and priorities, but the systems themselves will be better able to direct their own movement, schedule, and operation. Autonomous control of computational hardware is one of the capabilities that is becoming more desirable. We describe and demonstrate the infrastructure necessary for a computing system to autonomously change its hardware while in operation, without requiring outside intervention. The system absorbs much of its complexity into itself, and assumes responsibility for its own resources and operation. This allows it to present a simpler interface to its environment, and to autonomously respond to changes within itself or its environment. Our demonstration system works internally with circuit netlists, that it dynamically parses, places, routes, configures, connects, and implements within itself-at the finest granularity available-while continuing to run. It models itself and its resource usage, and keeps the model tightly synchronized with the changes that it undergoes, to ensure proper behavior. The system is also able to dynamically avoid resources that have been reserved or masked out because of defects or damage.
  Aerospace conference, 2009 IEEE; 04/2009
• Source

  Available from: psu.edu

  Conference Proceeding: An alternate wire database for Xilinx FPGAs

  N. Steiner, P. Athanas
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  ABSTRACT: This paper presents ADB, an alternate wire database, suitable for routing, tracing, and browsing in Xilinx Virtex, Virtex-E, Virtex-II, and Virtex-II Pro FPGAs. While mainstream design flows and place-and-route tools make good use of available routing resources, they often do so at the cost of comparatively large processing times. An alternative scheme is to modify or generate configuration bitstreams directly, in order to achieve more dynamic designs and to reduce processing times and memory footprints. ADB includes a complete set of compact wire databases for the indicated families, and can generate the necessary bitstream configurations with the help of JBits or an independent bitstream interface. These wire databases can also be used in standalone mode to facilitate routing research in situations where real device data might not normally be available.
  Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines, 2004. FCCM 2004. 12th Annual IEEE Symposium on; 05/2004