News
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Yesterday's meeting was a definite kick-off. For those who missed it, you can download yesterday's meeting minutes here!
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009
Tomorrow we'll have our first kickoff meeting for the term at EIT 3153 5 - 6pm! Stop by to find out what activities we'll be holding during the term!
Monday, January 26th, 2009
Our Dirac Decoder Project page has been updated. Also note the upcoming meetings and events.
Monday, January 19th, 2009
Our VHDL Tutorials will be beginning again this term. Our first session will be Tuesday, Jan. 20 at 5:30 in RCH 208.
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009
Our kick off meeting will be tonight at 4:30 in RCH 207. We'll be going over our activities for the next term, including an entry to the 47th DAC competition.
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008
Thanks to everyone who has comed to our tutorials. Our series continues this week with Part 2 and wraps up next week. We will have also have a design meeting regarding the Design Automation Conference next week after the tutorial so bring your innovative ideas! Read up on what the conference is about here. [Updated Link]
Friday, November 7th, 2008
For everyone who missed out on the first VHDL tutorial, you can find the slides [here]. A thanks to everyone who showed up and keep your eye out for when the next VHDL tutorial will be held!
Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
Thanks to those for coming out to kick-off meeting last week. For those that missed the presentation, you can get it here.
We are running VHDL tutorials. These are designed for both new students who haven't learned it and those that want to review it. Come on out!
Monday, June 4th, 2007
To all that missed the CMOS IC team meeting slides will be posted this week to go over what was talked about, which was basically and introduction to the project and goals for this term.
Also a new project page for the RFIC: Wireless Headphone System project has been added and can be accessed under the projects tab above. The page also contains research links for everyone to look through to gain an understanding from which we will build on in future design sessions.
Sunday, May 27th, 2007
Thanks to all who came out the last Thursday's KickOff Event and to Ritesh Patel who put on a great presentation. We are excited about the projects this term and we hope to make it a fun an productive one. For those of you who missed the presentation, its not to late to join! Simply e-mail one of the team lead contacts found in the presentation slides here.
Meetings for both projects start this week, with times and locations updated on the sidebar. The RF Transmitter and Receiver project team will be having short meeting to discuss the topic in more detail, plan successive design session and lastly provide the opportunity to meet the team.
Finally, tutorials will also be starting soon, so please keep watching the website for announcements of times and locations.
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
Apologies for the late organization of the kickoff meeting, held last Wednesday. For those of you who missed the presentation, it can be found here.
Meetings for all projects start this week, with times and locations updated on the sidebar. The SRAM meeting is an all-day design session, for wrapping up the layout of the project. For those who are interested in layout or who have layout skills, feel free to attend.
Tutorials will also be running, so please keep watching the website for announcements of starting times and locations.
Monday, September 25th, 2006
We're pleased to announce that the kickoff last Wednesday had a great turnout! It's good to see so many students interested in learning about hardware design.
Remember, the ASIC tutorial series are starting this week. There will be two different courses: ASIC 121 and ASIC 131. ASIC 121 will focus on digital hardware design, taught by Andrew Canis,
while ASIC 131 will focus on analog circuit design, taught by Bahman Hadji. They have been scheduled on different days, so it's possible to attend both. Design sessions also run at different times, so you can attend the tutorials and get involved with the projects without any conflicts.
Please check the website every week for the updated meeting times and locations.
Thursday, May 25th, 2006 - New GZIP Decompression Project
UW ASIC is endeavouring to create a partial decompression core based on the GZIP specification, defined in RFC 1952 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1952.txt). GZIP continues to be a popular lossless compression method, with applications in general storage and compressed HTTP content delivery through the use of "x-gzip" content encoding.
The core is to be a synthesizable decompressor for uncompressed and statically compressed data blocks. The RTL will be written in VHDL, and a demonstration will be performed on an Altera Cyclone II DE2 board. The design effort will attempt to maximize throughput and minimize latency, allowing it to be used in near real-time applications.
Want to contribute to the project? Check out our already-created Wiki and come out to the first meeting on Monday, May 29th at 5:30pm in RCH-306.
Thursday, May 25th, 2006 - UW ASIC Design Team T-Shirts
Another term means another round of T-shirts! Interested in getting one? Again, they're only $10.00 and selling fast! Email Junette if you wish to purchase one.
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Monday, March 27th, 2006 - UW ASIC Design Team T-Shirts
Once again, we've had T-shirts made to celebrate our team! Interested in getting a T-shirt? They're only $10.00 and selling fast! Email Junette if you wish to purchase one.
Tuesday, January 31st, 2006 - ASIC 130 Mini-Course
Furthering the UW ASIC Design Team's offering of educational tutorials, we are pleased to announce the inaugural ASIC 130 Digital Transistor Level Logic mini-course.
The ASIC 130 course will use only the basic building blocks - transistors and wires - to construct logic functions (e.g NAND, NOR, XOR), connect them together, and estimate speed and power consumption.
The course instructor will be Paul Teehan, who has worked at Sun Microsystems Laboratories in the VLSI Research Group, assisting in the development of analytical techniques for optimizing speed and power consumption in digital circuits, and in the design and analysis of full-custom asynchronous circuits for use in arithmetic units.
Monday, January 23rd, 2006 - ASIC 120 Mini-Course
The UW ASIC Design Team is pleased to announce the Winter 2006 offering of the ASIC 120 Digital Systems Design mini-course. The course outline may be viewed here.
ASIC 120 course content will draw from the abundant resources of the UW ASIC Design Team, and from the academic and industry experience of Jeff Wentworth, the course lecturer.
The ASIC 120 course agenda intends to supplement our students' academic experience in the digital x20s courses, while also going far beyond what will be learned in class by covering the entire standard cell ASIC design flow.
Tuesday, January 17th, 2006 - Altera Information Session
One of our major sponsors, Altera, is having an Information Session this week on Tuesday, January 17th at 7:30PM in TC 2218 (in the CECS). More info can be found at the CECS website.
They make the FPGA's and Development Boards that both the Digital Video Processor and Ogg Vorbis Decoder teams use. They're also one of the highest-paying co-op employers in Canada. If you're interested at all in digital design. You should definitely check them out. Hope to see you there!
Monday, October 17th, 2005 - ASIC 120 Mini-Course
As part of the UW ASIC Design Team's continued commitment to educating students on ASIC design we are announcing the Fall 2005 ASIC 120 mini-course. The course outline may be viewed here.
ASIC 120 course content will draw from the abundant resources of the UW ASIC Design Team, and from the academic and industry experience of Jeff Wentworth, the course lecturer.
The ASIC 120 course agenda intends to supplement our student's academic experience in the x20s courses, while also going far beyond what will be learned in class by covering the entire standard cell ASIC design flow.
Friday, September 2nd, 2005 - UW ASIC Design Team Display Case
As a result of the project development efforts of Junette Tan, the UW ASIC Design Team has acquired a display case on the 2nd floor of Engineering 2. We would like to thank Dr. Catherine Rosenberg, Bill Ott, and Roger Sanderson from the University of Waterloo E&CE Department for providing us with the use of this display case.
Saturday, July 30th, 2005 - UW ASIC Spirit Event Photographs
Thanks to all who came out to this term's spirit event and made it a great success - it means a lot to us !! View photos from the Summer 2005 UW ASIC Spirit Event here.
Friday, July 29th, 2005 - UW ASIC Design Team T-Shirt
 | Our team is continually shooting for the stars. Help us spread the word by wearing this stylish t-shirt on your next work term or around campus. Interested in getting an ASIC t-shirt? The price is $10.00/shirt. Email Ryan to convieniently arrange the drop off your payment and shirt size. |
Thursday, July 19th, 2005 - Announcing the UW ASIC Spirit Event
Every end brings a new beginning. Come out and wrap up the term's achievements with the whole Team. There will be pizza, cake, drinks, and a GameCube. Time and place: Thursday, July 28th, 2005, 7:00PM @ POETS.
Sunday, July 17th, 2005 - Completion of asynchronous 64bit SRAM proof-of-concept prototype design
A big congraduations go out to Mark Wang, David Wu and Ryan Norris for their dedication in completing the asynchronous 64bit SRAM prototype design in yesterday's 12 hour long MEGA DESIGN SESSION! The SRAM and control circuitry were designed on paper, and the decoder (designed by Paul Teehan, David Wu and Owen Perry), memory cells (designed by Christopher Sue), and sense amplifier (designed by Christopher Sue, Junette Tan, Mark Wang, and Ryan Norris) were assembled. At 1:00AM today, the final testbench was executed to verify the successful operation of the SRAM !!
Monday, May 9th, 2005 - UW ASIC Work Report submissions
Thanks go out to Nancy Xu and Lan Yu for writing their Winter 2005 work reports for the CMOS IC Team!
Friday, April 22nd, 2005 - Altera sponsors UW ASIC Design Team
We are proud to announce that the UW ASIC Design Team has officially acquired an Altera Stratix-based High Speed DSP Development board, valued at USD$2000, through sponsorship provided by Altera.
Friday, March 25th, 2005 - Launched our New Website
We've just launched our new website. Thanks go to Ken Ip, Jeff Laver, and Robert Woolley for their oustanding job on the new design.
March, 2005 - Completion of the 802.11g PLL frequency synthesizer proof-of-concept prototype design
The UW ASIC CMOS Integrated Circuit Team has been busy over the past 2 months performing research and development on the design of a monolithic Phase-Locked Loop frequency synthesizer integrated circuit. This circuit has been designed to meet the specifications required for a low-power 2.4GHz 802.11g direct conversion transceiver. We are now happy to announce that they have been successful in completeing the proof of concept prototype circuit. In the Summer of 2005 the prototype will be optimized for power and phase noise and layout will begin. Tape out is anticipated to occur in Fall 2005.
Thursday, February 17th, 2005
Robert Woolley spoke at the Nortel Networks & University of Waterloo Alumni Event and highlighted the UW ASIC Team as one of the innovative teams on campus that helps showcase the talent at UW.
January 2005 - Completion of our OpenRISC Implementation
Our implementation of the OpenCores.org OpenRISC 1000 is now complete. Now we approach the difficult task of determining our next endeavour.
Summer 2004 - PLL for 500 MHz Clock Completed
We have successfully completed a 500 MHz phase locked loop for clock generation for our implementation of the OpenCores.org OpenRISC processor.
