Design Automation for Custom Hardware in Computer Research

The equipment and software which permit a university group to perform computer hardware research is described. The objectives were to obtain a low-cost, minimally specialized hardware system coupled to computer-aided design techniques. Two measures demonstrated that these objectives were met: (1) students have been able to build reasonably large devices as part of their graduate research and, (2) the system has paid for itself many times over in the construction of computer devices which are not available commercially.