PULLMAN, WA April 12, 2012 — A mentally-controllable computer interface and a liquid-handling servo controller were some of the winners of the 2012 System-On-Chip (SoC) Design Competition held at MIT on February 3, 2012.
MIT students were challenged to build cost-effective and high-performance systems in the competition sponsored by ARM®, Digilent®, and Xilinx®. This first-ever SoC competition was part of the Independent Activities Period (IAP), an annual four-week break from MIT classes.
Teams of one to five students used the ARM Cortex M0 and Digilent Nexys3 Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA kits to build various projects in four weeks. The students received one week of training and used the remaining 3 weeks to design and make their projects.
“Students gained real-world project experience inventing applications for various industries,” said Clint Cole, president of Digilent. “Along with our partners at ARM’s and Xilinx’s University Programs, we are dedicated to improving engineering education, and find that design contests are an exciting imitation of the marketplace.”
Award Winners
First prize went to Mindlinx, an interactive human-computer interface. Mindlinx can monitor and process a plethora of bio-electrical signals including brain patterns, heartbeat, and muscle activity in real-time. Users can use it to conduct health assessments or to mentally control a computer. It was developed by Charles Franklin, Diony Rosa, Ben Shaya, and Alex Willisson.
Second prize went to Maglev, a real-time embedded controller developed by Darya Amin-Shahidi.
Third prize went to Deltabot, a custom servo controller, which controls three servos in a liquid-handling robot developed by Kevin Linke.
Honorable mention went to a hardware speech recognition system developed by Itaru Hiromi, Timothy Robertson, and Duncan Townsend.
More details of the contest can be found at http://blogs.arm.com/soc-design/.
You can learn more about:
Digilent Nexys 3 at http://www.digilentinc.com/nexys3
ARM Cortex M0 at http://www.arm.com/products/designstart/index.php?tab=processor and
http://www.arm.com/support/university/ip/
About Digilent
Digilent is a leading provider of high-end electronics solutions for academics, researchers, and industry. Over 1,000 universities, training centers, and research laboratories in more than 70 countries use Digilent products and services. Digilent also provides design and manufacturing services for many leading technology companies Analog Devices, Cypress Semiconductor, National Instruments, and Xilinx.
About ARM
ARM designs technology for advanced digital products, from wireless, networking, and consumer entertainment solutions to imaging, automotive, security, and storage devices. ARM’s comprehensive product offering includes 32-bit RISC microprocessors, graphics processors, enabling software, cell libraries, embedded memories, high-speed connectivity products, peripherals and development tools. Combined with comprehensive design services, training, support, and maintenance, and the company’s broad Partner community, they provide a total system solution that offers a fast, reliable path to market for leading electronics companies.
About Xilinx
Since being founded more than 25 years ago, Xilinx has been a semiconductor industry leader at the forefront of the technology industry. A pioneering company, Xilinx invented the FPGA and ranks among the world’s leading patent holders. The Xilinx University Program (XUP) is a community of over 1,800 universities across the world using Xilinx systems in teaching and research programs. Since their inception in 1985, Xilinx has fostered strong ties with universities. Today, the Xilinx University Program includes no charge access to a full suite of software tools and special academic pricing for university boards.
