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Programmable circuits topic for talks by visiting expert

A key contributor to the development of the integrated circuit will visit the Laboratory on Wednesday and Thursday, April 28-29, to meet with technical staff and deliver two far-ranging talks about programmable logic circuits.

Bob Conn, principal research and development engineer for Xilinx Inc. of San Jose, Calif., will speak at 10 a.m., Wednesday, April 28 in the Applied Monitoring and Transparency Laboratory at the Los Alamos Research Park. His talk is entitled " The Evolution of Programmable Logic Chips Into a Preferred Solution for High-Speed Computing Architectures."

He will give a second talk about the details of programmable logic for future supercomputers.at 9:30 a.m., on Thursday, April 29 in the Superconductivity Technology Center (MST-STC) conference room, off Eniwetok Road at Technical Area 3, Building 32, Room 134.

The AMTL conference room holds about 50 people, so those interested in attending the April 28 talk should R.S.V.P. to Vangie Martinez at elmtz@lanl.gov by electronic mail. Institutional host for Conn's talk is Laboratory Deputy Director for Science and Technology Bill Press.

Conn plans to describe the architectural evolution of programmable logic into the modern hardware innovations known as System on Programmable Chip. He will point to the growing impact of Field Programmable Gate Arrays on modern signal processing, where they are becoming the preferred alternative for new systems. Conn also plans to speculate where he believes this revolutionary technology is headed, especially in high-performance computing.

"Bob Conn has worked in Silicon Valley for decades, at many of the companies that defined modern computing and the silicon integrated circuit," said Mark Dunham, senior projects leader in the International, Space and Response Technologies Division (ISR-DO). "All Los Alamos staff interested in high-speed or real time computing should find this talk of interest."

Conn has agreed to hold detailed technical discussions with Laboratory staff interested in high-speed computing architectures and field-programmable gate arrays during his visit. Those who want to meet with Conn should contact Mark Dunham or Martinez at 7-2965, or John Ambrosiano of Advanced Computing (CCS-1) at 5-0457 regarding supercomputing topics, or Paul Graham of Space Data Systems (ISR-3) at 7-7024 regarding embedded processing and signal processing topics.

"Bob Conn's visit should interest a broad range of technical staff working at the Laboratory in our core capabilities of computer and computational sciences, from those conducting efficient large-scale complex system simulation to those developing embedded processing for remote sensing technology," Press said.

Conn began his career designing integrated circuits at National Semiconductor in 1970 and was a senior engineer at Fairchild Semiconductor. Since 1981, he has run his own design consulting firm, Connsult, providing design and prototype work on more than 100 projects. He holds more than 30 patents. Conn has a master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

-- Jim Danneskiold

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