The Rapid Prototyping of Application Specific Signal Processors (RASSP) program is a major DARPA/Tri-Service effort to improve the process by which embedded digital systems are designed and manufactured. The goal of this program is to achieve a 4X improvement in the design time, cost, and quality of these systems.

To achieve these goals, the extensive use of CAD tools over the complete design cycle is required. Further, areas such as enterprise integration, virtual prototyping, concurrent engineering (e.g., hardware/software codesign), and life cycle cost analysis must be understood and applied by the digital design engineer. Unfortunately, a majority of engineers today have not been exposed to these topics. Additionally few universities teach these topics in their undergraduate or graduate curriculums.

This paper describes the RASSP Education and Facilitation (RASSP E&F) program. The RASSP E&F program is attempting to increase the supply of engineers versed in the latest technologies to overcome the problems described above. The goal of the RASSP E&F effort is to transfer the RASSP technology to academia and industry by developing and delivering educational material.

To achieve this technology transfer, the RASSP E&F program has a major effort designed to produce and deliver educational material on the key elements of RASSP technology including the topic areas discussed above. The result of this effort is a set of educational "modules" covering selected topics in all areas of the design of embedded digital systems. A module is designed to cover either a complete topic area or a self-contained portion of a topic area. A module consists of approximately three hours of lecture material in the form of completely prepared and annotated slides, lab material, and exercises. The lab material is centered around the use of CAD tools and specifically utilizes Mentor Graphics tools where appropriate.

These modules are available for use in both industrial short courses and university courses. Efforts are underway to create a national repository for educational modules. This repository will provide on-going way for educational material that addresses the most current topics and utilizes the latest industrial strength CAD tools to be archived and distributed.

Bio:
Dr. Robert H. Klenke has been performing research in the areas of system-level modeling, hardware description languages, parallel algorithms for automatic test pattern generation, and high speed digital design since joining the Staff of the University of Virginia Center for Semicustom Integrated Systems in September, 1992. He received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Virginia Military Institute in 1982, and his M.S. and Ph.D. Degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia in 1989 and 1992. Dr. Klenke is a member of the IEEE Computer Society, Eta Kappa Nu, and Tau Beta Pi.