Queens University Belfast gains new research lab

Xilinx is providing major financial and technology support for a significant new research project at Queens University Belfast.

Xilinx is providing major financial and technology support for a significant new research project at Queens University Belfast.

The School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Queens will carry out collaborative research, experimentation and development with Xilinx at a new Programmable Systems Laboratory, established with the multinational corporation's support.

Xilinx will fund high-level research activity while also donating advanced technologies in a move designed to yield new concepts in semiconductor design for future telecommunications networks.

The high-level research project has been named PIPPIN (programmable IC platforms for programmable IP networks).

Xilinx has an advanced international research and development, design and operations centre in Dublin, where the company's European headquarters is also located.

Engineers at the Dublin centre and the company's corporate headquarters in California will work closely with the Queens University team.

Xilinx will provide the development environment for the university's new concepts.

This will include availability of high-end programmable devices, software and design tools to enable research on implementation techniques and applications.

The new Programmable Systems Laboratory at Queens is the brainchild of Professors Roger Woods and Alan Marshall who approached Xilinx with their ideas.

Queens is Northern Ireland's leading research institution and ranks among the top research institutions in Europe.

"The School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Queens represents a centre of excellence in programmable networks and reconfigurable hardware.

The combination of both areas of study in one research institution provided compelling reasons for this collaboration", said Ivo Bolsens, Chief Technology Officer at Xilinx.

"Our advanced semiconductor and software design techniques and Queens University's academic expertise will equip the new laboratory with powerful experimentation capabilities.

This effort aligns with the overall goal of Xilinx Research Labs to develop scalable solutions and design tools for low to high-end networking applications.

"The evolution of new telecommunications networks hinges on the level of future programmability which can be ingrained into electronic systems prior to their actual establishment", said Prof Roger Woods.

"Our goal is to create network systems that can change themselves after installation in order to meet differing requirements.

The key to this inherent flexibility lies in programmable logic development and the creation of highly powerful and scalable 'system on chip' products.

Using Xilinx technologies, we will create demonstration platforms for networks which are highly adaptable to future market trends.

It is envisaged that, in some instances, changes of function within the network could become 'intelligent' as the system evolves by itself to meet the long-term dynamics of demand in the type and volume of traffic on the network".

"Xilinx' programmable devices are extremely powerful and can be reconfigured individually within the systems in which they are placed, either on site or remotely.

They are ideally placed to be at the vanguard of future telecommunications industry developments", said Prof Woods.

The hardware circuitry in Xilinx advanced components, which are commonly used in today's communications systems, can be changed even after they have been installed in electronic equipment at a customer's premises.

This means that electronic equipment manufacturers can bring products to market faster, add new features later, improve performance after deployment and provide general maintenance from a remote location.

In the past twelve months, Xilinx invested over US $220 million in the research and development of new technology.

The company holds over 800 patents from its inventions.

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