The University of Manchester

Department of Computer Science

Faculty of Science and Engineering

An earmarked EPSRC research studentship is available to work on an EPSRC-funded project to investigate the potential of asynchronous design techniques to improve the power-efficiency of digital electronic ciruits. This studentship has arisen as a result of the formation of a Low Power Cluster of UK universities comprising the Universities of Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool and Queen's University, Belfast. The cluster will be responsible for arranging an annual UK workshop on low-power design and will meet regularly to coordinate activities.

The studentship is in the AMULET research group under Professor S.B.Furber. The AMULET group has established an international reputation for its work in asynchronous circuit design. The AMULET1 microprocessor is a fully self-timed implementation of the ARM RISC architecture, and is the first fully asynchronous VLSI implementation of a commercial microprocessor architecture. In 1995 the group gained a British Computer Society Award for AMULET1 and the 'Computing' IT Gold Award for Technology Transfer jointly with Advanced RISC Machines Limited who have licensed the AMULET processor technology from the University. More recently first samples of the AMULET2e asynchronous embedded microcontroller have been obtained and these are being used as the basis of a number of low-power system design experiments.

The AMULET group has strong industrial connections through its many collaborative research projects and expects to bring asynchronous design techniques to commercial fruition within the next five years. Within this project the focus is the exploitation of asychronous design for improving power-efficiency.

The studentship is tenable for 3 years and carried standard EPSRC terms with regard to the payment of fees and maintenance.

Applicants should have a good first degree in a science subject.

Application

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