CMOS array design automation techniques

A low cost, quick turnaround technique for generating custom metal oxide semiconductor arrays using the standard cell approach was developed, implemented, tested and validated. Basic cell design topology and guidelines are defined based on an extensive analysis that includes circuit, layout, process, array topology and required performance considerations particularly high circuit speed

A Risk Assessment for Road Transportation of Dangerous Goods: A Routing Solution☆

Abstract Improve road traffic safety is one of the most important objectives for transport policy makers in contemporary society, and represents a strategic issue for enhance life quality. Recently ISO 39001 (Road Traffic Safety Management Systems) introduced the guidelines of safety-based activities aimed to decreasing road accidents, in agreement with the Quality Management Systems (ISO 9000). Such guidelines are intended for infrastructure managers, administrators, and private entities, and defines a standard management for reduction of road risk. In this context, the risk arising by dangerous goods transport represents a particular threat which needs strategies and tools to reduce risk rate of society, property and environment. Several decision making solutions for transport managers and public administration are defined, but two open points still exist. Firstly, there are not applications supporting for dangerous goods carriers in tactical and operational planning. The second point is related to impacts of traffic congestion on road accidents frequency: there is not a common approach for study and assessment these relationships. The aim of this paper is to analyze the interactions between road traffic flow and frequency of accidents: the paper propose an integrated approach for the study of routing problems considering safety. The first part concerns a brief critical review on literature solutions. Following is presented a new approach to analyze a road accident involving a dangerous goods, focusing on the reason which lead to a leakage of hazardous materials. This paper presents an upgrade of a minimum cost routing problem for a road carrier considering also the risk related to dangerous goods. After a description on how computing risk concerning dangerous goods transportation in a routing choice problem, the paper describes a solution aimed at providing a tactical and operating decision-making tool. The aim is to enable the carrier that transport dangerous goods to calculate the quantification of the risk for each specific trip in addition to operating cost for each specific transport. The added value of risk quantification could be used by transportation carrier in ISO 39001 to numerically prove his own safety-decisions to the control authority. The analysis developed has provided good results. The approach defined, albeit simplified, is a useful tool, especially when ISO 39001 standards will strengthen road safety

Enabling Technologies for Silicon Microstrip Tracking Detectors at the HL-LHC

While the tracking detectors of the ATLAS and CMS experiments have shown excellent performance in Run 1 of LHC data taking, and are expected to continue to do so during LHC operation at design luminosity, both experiments will have to exchange their tracking systems when the LHC is upgraded to the high-luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) around the year 2024. The new tracking systems need to operate in an environment in which both the hit densities and the radiation damage will be about an order of magnitude higher than today. In addition, the new trackers need to contribute to the first level trigger in order to maintain a high data-taking efficiency for the interesting processes. Novel detector technologies have to be developed to meet these very challenging goals. The German groups active in the upgrades of the ATLAS and CMS tracking systems have formed a collaborative "Project on Enabling Technologies for Silicon Microstrip Tracking Detectors at the HL-LHC" (PETTL), which was supported by the Helmholtz Alliance "Physics at the Terascale" during the years 2013 and 2014. The aim of the project was to share experience and to work together on key areas of mutual interest during the R&D phase of these upgrades. The project concentrated on five areas, namely exchange of experience, radiation hardness of silicon sensors, low mass system design, automated precision assembly procedures, and irradiations. This report summarizes the main achievements

Ceramic applications in turbine engines

Ceramic material characterization and testing of ceramic nozzle vanes, turbine tip shrouds, and regenerators disks at 36 C above the baseline engine TIT and the design, analysis, fabrication and development activities are described. The design of ceramic components for the next generation engine to be operated at 2070 F was completed. Coupons simulating the critical 2070 F rotor blade was hot spin tested for failure with sufficient margin to quality sintered silicon nitride and sintered silicon carbide, validating both the attachment design and finite element strength. Progress made in increasing strength, minimizing variability, and developing nondestructive evaluation techniques is reported

Lightweight thermally efficient composite feedlines, preliminary design and evaluation

Six liquid hydrogen feedline design concepts were developed for the cryogenic space tug. The feedlines include composite and all-metal vacuum jacketed and non-vacuum jacketed concepts, and incorporate the latest technology developments in the areas of thermally efficient vacuum jacket end closures and standoffs, radiation shields in the vacuum annulus, thermal coatings, and lightweight dissimilar metal flanged joints. The feedline design concepts were evaluated on the basis of thermal performance, weight, cost, reliability, and reusability. It is shown that composite tubing provides improved thermal performance and reduced weight for each design concept considered. Approximately 12 kg (26 lb.) can be saved by the use of composite tubing for the LH2 feedline and the other propulsion lines in the space tug

Ceramic applications in turbine engines

Development testing activities on the 1900 F-configuration ceramic parts were completed, 2070 F-configuration ceramic component rig and engine testing was initiated, and the conceptual design for the 2265 F-configuration engine was identified. Fabrication of the 2070 F-configuration ceramic parts continued, along with burner rig development testing of the 2070 F-configuration metal combustor in preparation for 1132 C (2070 F) qualification test conditions. Shakedown testing of the hot engine simulator (HES) rig was also completed in preparation for testing of a spin rig-qualified ceramic-bladed rotor assembly at 1132 C (2070 F) test conditions. Concurrently, ceramics from new sources and alternate materials continued to be evaluated, and fabrication of 2070 F-configuration ceramic component from these new sources continued. Cold spin testing of the critical 2070 F-configuration blade continued in the spin test rig to qualify a set of ceramic blades at 117% engine speed for the gasifier turbine rotor. Rig testing of the ceramic-bladed gasifier turbine rotor assembly at 108% engine speed was also performed, which resulted in the failure of one blade. The new three-piece hot seal with the nickel oxide/calcium fluoride wearface composition was qualified in the regenerator rig and introduced to engine operation wiwth marginal success

Choose-Your-Own Adventure: A Lightweight, High-Performance Approach To Defect And Variation Mitigation In Reconfigurable Logic

For field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), fine-grained pre-computed alternative configurations, combined with simple test-based selection, produce limited per-chip specialization to counter yield loss, increased delay, and increased energy costs that come from fabrication defects and variation. This lightweight approach achieves much of the benefit of knowledge-based full specialization while reducing to practical, palatable levels the computational, testing, and load-time costs that obstruct the application of the knowledge-based approach. In practice this may more than double the power-limited computational capabilities of dies fabricated with 22nm technologies. Contributions of this work: • Choose-Your-own-Adventure (CYA), a novel, lightweight, scalable methodology to achieve defect and variation mitigation • Implementation of CYA, including preparatory components (generation of diverse alternative paths) and FPGA load-time components • Detailed performance characterization of CYA – Comparison to conventional loading and dynamic frequency and voltage scaling (DFVS) – Limit studies to characterize the quality of the CYA implementation and identify potential areas for further optimizatio

Scalable Analysis, Verification and Design of IC Power Delivery

Due to recent aggressive process scaling into the nanometer regime, power delivery network design faces many challenges that set more stringent and specific requirements to the EDA tools. For example, from the perspective of analysis, simulation efficiency for large grids must be improved and the entire network with off-chip models and nonlinear devices should be able to be analyzed. Gated power delivery networks have multiple on/off operating conditions that need to be fully verified against the design requirements. Good power delivery network designs not only have to save the wiring resources for signal routing, but also need to have the optimal parameters assigned to various system components such as decaps, voltage regulators and converters. This dissertation presents new methodologies to address these challenging problems. At first, a novel parallel partitioning-based approach which provides a flexible network partitioning scheme using locality is proposed for power grid static analysis. In addition, a fast CPU-GPU combined analysis engine that adopts a boundary-relaxation method to encompass several simulation strategies is developed to simulate power delivery networks with off-chip models and active circuits. These two proposed analysis approaches can achieve scalable simulation runtime. Then, for gated power delivery networks, the challenge brought by the large verification space is addressed by developing a strategy that efficiently identifies a number of candidates for the worst-case operating condition. The computation complexity is reduced from O(2^N) to O(N). At last, motivated by a proposed two-level hierarchical optimization, this dissertation presents a novel locality-driven partitioning scheme to facilitate divide-and-conquer-based scalable wire sizing for large power delivery networks. Simultaneous sizing of multiple partitions is allowed which leads to substantial runtime improvement. Moreover, the electric interactions between active regulators/converters and passive networks and their influences on key system design specifications are analyzed comprehensively. With the derived design insights, the system-level co-design of a complete power delivery network is facilitated by an automatic optimization flow. Results show significant performance enhancement brought by the co-design