Mind the (synthesis) gap: examining where academic FPGA tools lag behind industry

Firstly, we present VTR-to-Bitstream v2.0, the latest version of our open-source toolchain that takes Verilog input and produces a packed, placed— and now routed—solution that can be programmed onto the Xilinx commercial FPGA architecture. Secondly, we apply this updated tool to measure the gap between academic and industrial FPGA tools by examining the quality of results at each of the three main compilation stages: synthesis, packing & placement, routing. Our findings indicate that the delay gap (according to Xilinx static timing analysis) for academic tools breaks down into a 31% degradation with synthesis, 10% with packing & placement, and 15% with routing. This leads us to believe that opportunities for improvement exist not only within VPR, but also in the front-end tools that lie upstream

Initiation of stabilized detonations by projectiles

A high-speed projectile in combustible gas can initiate and stabilize a detonation wave under suitable conditions [1]. In this paper, numerical simulations of projectile induced detonation waves are presented. Using a one-step irreversible reaction model, the transition from shock-induced combustion to stabilized oblique detonation is observed via numerical simulations. An analysis of this transition by means of the critical decay-rate model, which considers a balance between energy-release due to reaction, and quenching due to shock-curvature, is presented

Low-scale inflation in a model of dark energy and dark matter

We present a complete particle physics model that explains three major problems of modern cosmology: inflation, dark matter and dark energy, and also gives a mechanism for leptogenesis. The model has a new gauge group $SU(2)_Z$ that grows strong at a scale $\Lambda\sim 10^{-3}$ eV. We focus on the inflationary aspects of the model. Inflation occurs with a Coleman-Weinberg potential at a low scale, down to \sim 6\times 10^5\gev, being compatible with observational data.Comment: 5 two-column pages, RevTex4; two reference added and minor changes made in the text; published in JCA

Dilepton/Photon Production in Heavy Ion Collisions and the QCD Phase Transition

We calculate electromagnetic production from highly excited hadronic matter created in heavy ion collisions. The rates include the usual lowest order processes in quark-gluon plasma plus the usual reactions in the hadronic phase, related with rho,a_1 mesons. The space-time integration is done using a hydrodynamical model. We have found that dilepton mass spectrum agrees with results of other previous works, but *disagrees* with the CERES dilepton data. In order to explain these data, some "unconventional" production mechanism need to be incorporated: we discuss especially the notion of modified rho,a_1 masses, which indeed may explain the data. Other suggestions (e.g. the longer-lived fireball) to increase the production of low mass dileptons seem to be insufficient for the task. The results for direct photon production are below the current WA80 experimental bounds, for all variants considered.Comment: 34 pages LaTeX, with encapsulated ps figures. WWW home at http://looney.physics.sunysb.edu/~daffy/phd.html One comment and one reference added to appendi

Stochastic homogenization of interfaces moving with changing sign velocity

We are interested in the averaged behavior of interfaces moving in stationary ergodic environments, with oscillatory normal velocity which changes sign. This problem can be reformulated, using level sets, as the homogenization of a Hamilton-Jacobi equation with a positively homogeneous non-coercive Hamiltonian. The periodic setting was earlier studied by Cardaliaguet, Lions and Souganidis (2009). Here we concentrate in the random media and show that the solutions of the oscillatory Hamilton-Jacobi equation converge in $L^\infty$-weak $*$ to a linear combination of the initial datum and the solutions of several initial value problems with deterministic effective Hamiltonian(s), determined by the properties of the random media