LA Workshop and MIPSfpga Initiatives in Russia and Electronics Teaching

Imagination Technologies, known as the developer of the PowerVR graphics processor inside the Apple iPhone, with approval from President Stanford John Hennessy invites teachers and graduate students in electronics and programming to a free seminar near Los Angeles, which will be held May 13-14 . The other organizer of the seminar, in addition to Imagination, is Xilinx - Company No. 1 in FPGA / FPGA. If you do research or teach, especially near Los Angeles (UCLA, Caltech, UC San Diego, CalPoly, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine, Arizona State, University of Nevada Las Vegas, etc.) you can join - will a lot of interesting.

What is this about:

www.kit-e.ru/events/Imagination-Technologies_30_04_15.php

MIPSfpga from Imagination Technologies for Russian universities
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Imagination Technologies, widely known as the developer of the PowerVR graphics processor inside the Apple iPhone, has begun free licensing for universities of the modern industrial processor core of the MIPS architecture with source codes in the Verilog hardware description language. The new product, called MIPSfpga, will improve communication with the electronics industry for students studying computer architecture and systems design on a chip.

The processor core used in MIPSfpga is the basic configuration of the industrial core MIPS microAptiv UP, which is installed, in particular, in the Microchip PIC32MZ microcontroller. Students get the opportunity to experiment in building systems on a chip using FPGAs from Xilinx and Altera. Examples of experiments are the creation of multi-core systems, the addition of new commands to the processor, and the creation of new cache architectures.

In an official press release published by Imagination Technologies, the MIPSfpga product was highly appreciated by Stanford University President John Hengnessy and professors from other leading world universities. Some experts have already experienced MIPSfpga in practice, among them representatives of such educational institutions as Imperial College London and University College London. Professors Keio, the oldest in Japan, the prestigious Chinese universities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Tsinghua University spoke about the product.

Now Russian universities are connected to work with MIPSfpga. For them, the Imagination initiative provides an opportunity for the rapid expansion of domestic experts in the global chip design industry. If the result of experimentation at a university is successful, developers can attract investment, purchase a commercial license for the MIPS microAptiv UP or MIPS M5150 core, and make an ASIC chip in a factory.

This is what MIPSfpga President of Stanford University John Hennessy said about:

globenewswire.com/news-release/2015/04/27/728352/10130742/en/Imagination-Revolutionizes-CPU-Architecture-Education-With-Free-and-Open-Access-to-a-Modern-MIPS-CPU. html

“It's been more than 30 years since we created the MIPS architecture at Stanford University. I’m pleased to see the MIPS back to academics in the big way. MIPS MIPS RTL code and explore a real MIPS CPU. ”

- Dr. John L. Hennessy, Office of the President, Stanford University
(Co-Founder, MIPS Computer Systems, 1984)

Who will you meet at our seminar? First of all, with David and Sarah Harris, the authors of the Digital Circuit Design and Computer Architecture, a free edition in Russian (sponsored by Imagination Technologies) should appear from day to day. David and Sarah Harris prepared the MIPSfpga package, working closely with several engineering teams of Imagination Technologies.


David Harris studied at Stanford and MIT, after which he worked at Intel as a developer of Pentium II and Itanium processors. After this, David was a consultant at Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and other companies. Now David Harris is a professor at Harvey Mudd College. David is the author of not only books on the development of microcircuits, but also books on mountain tourism in southern California.

Sarah Harris studied at Stanford and Brigham Young University, after which she worked at Hewlett-Packard, the supercomputer center in San Diego, Nvidia, and Microsoft Research in Beijing. Sarah is currently working at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.

You will also meet at the workshop of Robert Owen, a renowned technical education consultant who for 17 years at Texas Instruments, Xilinx, ARM and now Imagination has traveled over 600 universities in the world, including 40 universities in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. In the photo on the left, Robert Owen meets with the Vice-Rector of the Ryazan State Technical University (I correctly translated Ryazan State Technical University, Russia?). Robert Owen is a MIPSfpga project manager. In the photo on the right, your humble servant, Yuri Panchul, I will also be at the MIPSfpga seminar, since I worked on MIPSfpga from the very beginning as technical consultant to Robert Owen:



The official announcement of the seminar and the general structure of the core:



Here are the exercise boards with MIPSfpga:



What is famous College Harvey Mudd College, in which we will hold a seminar? Well, for example, by the fact that, according to the payscale website, graduates of this educational institution earn on average more than graduates of any other university in the states in general. More than graduates of Stanford, Harvard and MIT:

www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2014/full-list-of-schools

This was even written in the Russian press:

www.runyweb.com/articles/58/only-150-colleges-are-istrachennyh-money.html

But the slides about the free textbook in Russian (also from Harris & Harris), which will be released this month and should help prepare students for using MIPSfpga - bit.ly/hh2slides






















Now a bunch of links about MIPSfpga:

For early access to MIPSfpga university professors can register at community.imgtec.com/university

Official press release in English - www.imgtec.com/news/detail.asp?ID=979

Official message in the corporate blog in English - blog.imgtec.com/mips-processors/mipsfpga-opens-up-the-mips-architecture-to-universities-worldwide

Pre-release text in Russian on Habrahabr, written after the publication of a seminar in Los Angeles about MIPSfpga (this text may help interpreting the press release) - habrahabr.ru/post/256223

Emails: Official PR Imagination:

UK: David Harold david.harold@imgtec.com +44 (0) 1923 260 511
USA: Jen Bernier-Santarini jen.bernier@imgtec.com +1 408-530-5178

Imagination Educational Program Manager:
Robert Owen e-mail: robert.owen@imgtec.com

Contact in Imagination Technologies in Russian: Yuri Panchul yuri.panchul@imgtec.com

The current list of links to articles in the world press about MIPSfpga - www.silicon-russia.com/2015/05/05/media_about_mipsfpga

You can also join the Silicon Russia newsletter, which discusses initiatives related to Russians in the electronics industry - groups.google.com/forum/# ! Forum / silicon-russia