Research Overview

We are a creative and energetic research group exploring interesting ideas in the design and synthesis of digital systems, especially in the programmable hardware realm. We are attracted to research endeavours that align with three overarching criteria:

Novelty: We seek novel and innovative solutions to real problems, and we prefer to be the first to break ground in new fields.

Accessibility: We pursue research that can be used and built-upon by others, that benefits society, and that has low barriers to its practical application.

Impact: We aim to produce results that are widely cited by other researchers, and we strive for excellence as recognized by our peers in the research community and in industry.

View our publications and patents.

Specific research thrusts:

Prof. Anderson's research relates to computer hardware design, and specifically to field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). An FPGA is a programmable computer chip that can be configured by the end-user to implement anydigital circuit. As such, FPGAs are much different than traditional chips which are fabricated to perform a specific function. FPGAs are a $5 billion dollar market today, and are used in many applications including networking, automotive, consumer and industrial electronics. Dr. Anderson's work seeks to improve FPGAs from the area, speed, power and ease-of-use perspectives by innovations in FPGA circuits, architectures and tools. He is also interested in applications of FPGAs, particularly in area and power-constrained settings such as embedded systems.

Prof. Anderson's other research interests lie in computer-aided design (CAD) algorithms for integrated circuits, digital design and circuits, computer architecture and software engineering.

LegUp: A large on-going project that aims to automatically compile C programs to processor/accelerator FPGA-based systems. The LegUp project is co-led by Profs. Anderson and Stephen Brown. Check out the LegUp website. Download the LegUp tool and try it out!

Research Team

Faculty:

Jason Anderson leads the group.

Ph.D. Candidates:

Marcel Gort joined the group in September 2009. He received the B.Eng in Computer Engineering from the University of Western Ontario, with an internship at the IBM Toronto Software Lab from May of 2005 to August of 2006 as part of the compiler group. He completed his M.A.Sc at the University of British Columbia under the supervision of Dr. Steve Wilton. Marcel's interests include CAD tools for FPGAs, FPGA architectures, and post-silicon debug architectures.

Jason Luu completed his M.A.Sc. and is currently a third-year Ph.D. student working on generic packing techniques and block architectures for FPGAs. He attended the University of Waterloo for his undergraduate studies. Jason is co-supervised by Prof. Jonathan Rose.

Andrew Canis is a second-year Ph.D. student researching FPGA high-level synthesis. Andrew is a graduate of the University of Waterloo's ECE program. He is co-supervised by Prof. Stephen Brown.

James (Jongsok) Choi is a first-year Ph.D. student contributing to the LegUp high-level synthesis project. His M.A.Sc. thesis focussed on automated hardware/software co-design. He received his B.A.Sc. from the University of Waterloo, and interned previously at Qualcomm, Marvell Semiconductor, RIM and Genesis Microchip (now STMicro). He is co-supervised by Prof. Stephen Brown.

Safeen Huda began in January 2012 as a Ph.D. student working on FPGA architcture, circuits and tools. He is completed his M.A.Sc. under the supervision of Prof. Ali Sheikholeslami, working in the area of spintronics. Safeen did his B.A.Sc. project research on clock gating architectures for FPGA power reduction.

Blair Fort joined the group in January 2012 and is pursuing the Ph.D. degree. He will be contributing to the LegUp high-level synthesis project. Blair has spent the last few years at Altera Toronto and continues part-time in his Altera role.

M.A.Sc. Candidates:

Steven Gurfinkel joined the group in summer 2011. He is working on GPU applications and architectures. He is co-supervised by Prof. Natalie Enright Jerger.

Tahir Diop joined the group in September 2011. He completed his undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering at the University of Manitoba.

B.A.Sc. Candidates:

Lanny Lian is a fourth-year ECE student working with us for the summer of 2012. He completed his professional experience year at Altera in San Jose. He received the NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA).

Jenny Huang is a third-year ECE student working with us for the summer of 2012. She received the University of Toronto Excellence Award (UTEA).

Ryan Xi is a third-year ECE student working with us for the summer of 2012. He received a Faculty Undergraduate Summer Research Award.

Miad Nasr is a third-year ECE student working with us for the summer of 2012. He received the NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA).

Alumni:

Graduate:

Bill Teng researched latch-based techniques for FPGA performance improvement. He graduated from U of T's ECE program with honours in 2008. He has worked at Cognos (now IBM) and Nortel as a Software Engineer. Bill's academic interests are VLSI, algorithms, computer architecture, and parallel programming. He joined Achronix Semiconductor upon graduation with his M.A.Sc.

Warren Shum worked on synthesis techniques for FPGA power reduction and also on algorithmic noise analysis/mitigation in FPGA CAD. He received the B.A.Sc degree in ECE from U of T in 2009 with a minor in bioengineering. From 2007-2008, Warren worked at Altera Corporation, in the power modelling group. In his spare time, Warren enjoys playing, composing, and listening to music. He joined Altera upon graduation with his M.A.Sc.

Mark Aldham was an M.A.Sc. student researching embedded processors and automatic hardware profiling. He is a graduate of UofT's Engineering Science program. He graduated in 2011 with his M.A.Sc., and joined Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, USA. He was co-supervised by Prof. Stephen Brown.

Undergraduate:

Kevin Nam is a third-year ECE student worked with us for the summer of 2011 on the LegUp project. He received the NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA).

Stefan Hadjis is a third-year Engineering Science student worked with us for the summer of 2011 on the LegUp project. He received the NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA).

Alex Liu is a third-year ECE student worked with us for the summer of 2011 on implementing computations using graphics procressing units (GPUs). He received an ECE summer research award.

Ahmed Kammoona is a third-year ECE student who worked with us for the summer of 2010. He received an NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA). Ahmed worked on high-level hardware synthesis and embedded processors. He's currently doing his PEY at Altera Corp in Toronto.

Victor Zhang is a third-year ECE student working who worked with us for the summer of 2010. He received a summer research scholarship on his admission to the ECE program. Victor worked on high-level hardware synthesis and embedded processors. He's currently doing his PEY at Altera Corp in Toronto.

Chirag Ravishankar is a recently graduated ECE student who worked on synthesis-friendly logic block architectures for improving the area-efficiency of FPGAs, and on FPGA power reduction. He spent one semester as an exchange student at the National University of Singapore. He received an NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA) in the summer of 2009. He is pursuing his graduate studies at the University of Waterloo.

Considering joining us?

The ECE department at the University of Toronto is one of the top in North America and admission to our graduate programs is very competitive. I am always looking for self-motivated and talented graduate students interested in pursuing graduate studies. Thesis topics will center on architectures, circuits and CAD for FPGAs, or applications of FPGAs. Students in my research group will need a strong background in one or more of the following: C/C++ programing, algorithms, optimization, formal techniques (e.g., ILP, SAT), VLSI circuits and architectures, digital CMOS circuit design. Strength in English oral and written communication is mandatory.

If you are a UofT ECE undergraduate student considering graduate studies in computer engineering, do contact me and consider joining us.

Regarding short-term undergraduate internships, I am unable to accept any applicants from outside the University of Toronto. Research opportunities may be possible for outstanding University of Toronto ECE or EngSci undergraduate students.

-- Jason