Research in architecture and VLSI is part of the Computer Systems Laboratory. Computer Systems research at Cornell encompasses both experimental and theoretical work growing out of topics in computer architecture, parallel computer architecture, operating systems and compilers, computer protocols and networks, programming languages and environments, distributed systems, VLSI design, and system specification and verification. Faculty members with primary interests in the architecture and VLSI area include: Faculty and Researchers Rajit Manohar's
research is concerned with the design of efficient
asynchronous (clockless) computation structures in VLSI, and the use of
formal methods to guarantee the correctness of such structures. In work on formal methods, Professor Manohar has developed new
techniques to analyze the correctness of a class of program
transformations commonly used in asynchronous VLSI synthesis. The goal is
to provide a top-down design methodology that provides a proof of
correctness of the final circuit implementation without incurring the
overhead of verification. The amount of power required by a processor is quickly becoming a
design constraint. Professor Manohar's group is working on a low energy
asynchronous processor architecture that uses a number of novel adaptive
techniques to minimize power consumption. Recent work by the group has
shown how to design asynchronous pipelines that are both throughput and
energy optimal. There is a remarkable similarity between the design of asynchronous
VLSI systems and networks because they are both event-driven. Professor
Manohar's group is working on modelling computer networks in silicon,
aiming to develop a hardware simulation infrastructure that can simulate
wireless networks many orders of magnitude faster than real-time. | 
