[755-1] Project Demos

[Konstantinos Dovrolis <dovrolis@cs.wisc.edu>]

Folks

The project demos will finally be scheduled for Monday, May 17.
However, if at least one member of the group is going to leave
Madison earlier, please let me know and we will schedule a demo
on Thursday or Friday. Note that this also means that *all* 
group members have to be present  at the demo.

We should plan 1h for each group. There are 6 groups, so we
can schedule ***tentatively*** for the following times:

9am-10am: Hong,Mo-Huang,Kun
10am-11am: Carl.Colin, Brian
11am-noon: Vijay,Desira,Irwan

1pm-2pm: Saad,Faisal,Milo,Muhammad 
2pm-3pm: Abid,Ross, Harit
3pm-4pm: Dongxing,Xueyuan

The demos will be at the 2nd nova lab, and we will probably reserve
3-4 workstations.

Please note: The demos should be in a form of presentation "on the
screen". This means that you have to think what is the best way to
explain and present your work, showing at each step the corresponding
schematics, circuits, simulation traces, or layout blocks on the
screen. This is why it is suggested that you come at the lab say
10mins before, and setup tools and windows. 

For example, a possible flow can be:

1. Explain how your switch works at the behavioral level, showing
us how the simulator that you have switches packets from inputs to
outputs. Make sure that you cover all the interesting cases, such
as priority packets (if you have such), drop-scenarios, "fairness-
challenging" situations, "throughput-challenging" situations etc.

2. Explain any architectural innovations you have made

3. Explain the system's operation at the logic-level, and show some
interesting-cases Quicksim simulations for the full-system or for
components of it. Note: all the demo simulations should be already
made *before* the demo.

4. Go to the circuit-level, and explain any circuit designs that
you designed to improve performance. Show the corresponding Accusim
simulations.

5. Go to the layout-level, and show the full-custom or SDL layout
that you have drawn. Perform DRC and LVS checks during the demo. 

6. Show the top-level layout, explaining things such as
overall floorplanning decisions. Discuss any problems with the placement 
or routing.

7. Show one or two Accusim simulations for the entire system (post-layout)
that excite the system's critical path.  

8. Anything else that you think that we should see. It is very important
that you show us both the things that are great, and also the things that
don't work, or don't work well.

Again, good luck with the project and the exam.

C.