Model Driven Engineering Benefits for High Level Synthesis

This report presents the benefits of using the Model Driven Engineering (MDE) methodology to solve major difficulties encountered by usual high level synthesis (HLS) flows. These advantages are highlighted in a design space exploration environment we propose. MDE is the skeleton of our HLS flow dedicated to intensive signal processing to demonstrate the expected benefits of these software technologies extended to hardware design. Both users and designers of the design flow benefit from the MDE methodology, participating to a concrete and effective advancement in the high level synthesis research domain. The flow is automatized from UML specifications to VHDL code generation and has been successfully evaluated for the conception of a video processing application

FPGA Configuration of Intensive Multimedia Processing Tasks Modeled in UML

Recent research have demonstrate interests in a codesign framework     that allows description refinement at different abstraction level.     We have proposed such a framework that allows SoC resources     allocation for regular and repetitive tasks found in intensive     multimedia applications. Nevertheless, the framework does not directly target     reconfigurable architectures, the difficult job of placing and     routing an application on a FPGA being postponed to a dedicated     tool. In order to limit the number of synthesis on this external     tool, we propose an algorithm that, from a high level description     of an intensive multimedia application, estimates the resource     usages on a given FPGA architecture. This algorithm makes use of a     simple mathematical formalism issued from case study     implementations

Complementary Communication Path for Energy Efficient On-Chip Optical Interconnects

International audienceOptical interconnects are considered to be one of the key solutions for future generation on-chip interconnects. However, energy efficiency is mainly limited by the losses incurred by the optical signals, which considerably reduces the optical power received by the photodetectors. In this paper we propose a differential transmission of the modulated signals, which contributes to improve the transmission of the optical signal power on the receiver side. With this approach, it is possible to reduce the input laser power and increase the energy efficiency of the optical communication. The approach is generic and can be applied to SWSR-, MWSR-, SWMR- and MWMR-like architectures

FPGA Implementation of Embedded Cruise Control and Anti-Collision Radar

The ModEasy project seeks to develop techniques and software tools to aid in the development of reliable microprocessor based electronic (embedded) systems using advanced development and verification systems. The tools are to be evaluated in practical domains such as the automotive sector for reactive cruise control and anti-collision radar. We choose to define specific IPs using FPGA techniques to cover this application domain. This paper presents the implementation of such a complex and safety application on a single FPGA. The target system is composed of a reactive cruise control, a detection radar and the associated treatments

Chorus Digitalis: polyphonic gestural singing

Chorus Digitalis is a choir of gesture controlled digital singers. Chorus Digitalis is based on Cantor Digitalis, a gesture controlled singing voice synthesizer, and the Méta-Mallette, an environment designed for collective electronic music and video performances. Cantor Digitalis is an improved formant synthesizer, using the RT-CALM voice source model and source-filter interaction mechanisms. Chorus Digitalis is the result of the integration of voice synthesis in the Méta-Mallette environment. Each virtual voice is controlled by both a graphic tablet and a joystick. Polyphonic singing performances of Chorus Digitalis with four players will be given at the conference. The Méta-Mallette and Cantor Digitalis are implemented using Max/MSP

Thermal Aware Design Method for VCSEL-Based On-Chip Optical Interconnect

Optical Network-on-Chip (ONoC) is an emerging technology considered as one of the key solutions for future generation on-chip interconnects. However, silicon photonic devices in ONoC are highly sensitive to temperature variation, which leads to a lower efficiency of Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers (VCSELs), a resonant wavelength shift of Microring Resonators (MR), and results in a lower Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). In this paper, we propose a methodology enabling thermal-aware design for optical interconnects relying on CMOS-compatible VCSEL. Thermal simulations allow designing ONoC interfaces with low gradient temperature and analytical models allow evaluating the SNR.Comment: IEEE International Conference on Design Automation and Test in Europe (DATE 2015), Mar 2015, Grenoble, France. 201

Drawing melodies: Evaluation of chironomic singing synthesis

Cantor Digitalis, a real-time formant synthesizer controlled by a graphic tablet and a stylus, is used for assessment of melodic precision and accuracy in singing synthesis. Melodic accuracy and precision are measured in 3 experiments for groups of 20 and 28 subjects. The task of the subjects is to sing musical intervals and short melodies, at various tempi, using chironomy (hand-controlled singing), mute chironomy (without audio feedback) and their own voices. The results show the high accuracy and precision obtained by all the subjects for chironomic control of singing synthesis. Some subjects performed significantly better in chironomic singing compared to natural singing, although other subjects showed comparable proficiency. For the chironomic condition, mean note accuracy is less than 12 cents and mean interval accuracy is less than 25 cents for all the subjects. Comparing chironomy and mute chironomy shows that the skills used for writing and drawing are used for chironomic singing, but that the audio feedback helps in interval accuracy. Analysis of blind chironomy (without visual reference) indicates that a visual feedback helps much in both note and interval accuracy and precision. This study demonstrates the capabilities of chironomy as a precise and accurate mean for controlling singing synthesis

Survey on activation functions for optical neural networks

ABSTRACT: Integrated photonics arises as a fast and energy-efficient technology for the implementation of artificial neural networks (ANNs). Indeed, with the growing interest in ANNs, photonics shows great promise to overcome current limitations of electronic-based implementation. For example, it has been shown that neural networks integrating optical matrix multiplications can potentially run two orders of magnitude faster than their electronic counterparts. However, the transposition in the optical domain of the activation functions, which is a key feature of ANNs, remains a challenge. There is no direct optical implementation of state-of-the-art activation functions. Currently, most designs require time-consuming and power-hungry electro-optical conversions. In this survey, we review both all-optical and opto-electronic activation functions proposed in the state-of-the-art. We present activation functions with their key characteristics, and we summarize challenges for their use in the context of all-optical neural networks. We then highlight research directions for the implementation of fully optical neural networks