Pictured (from left to right: Mark Ronald, President and CEO of BAE Systems North America; Nariman Farvardin, Dean of the Clark School of Engineering; C.D. (Dan) Mote, President of the University of Maryland; and Bruce Hamilton, President of the BAE SYSTEMS Technology Services Sector.

The University of Maryland’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering recently dedicated four state-of-the-art laboratories for research and education in computer engineering, made possible in part by a generous gift from BAE SYSTEMS.

The facilities, collectively called the BAE SYSTEMS Computer Engineering Instructional and Research Laboratories, include two graduate-level research facilities and two undergraduate project labs.

"BAE SYSTEMS has made the single most significant external contribution to our computer engineering programs," said Steven Marcus, Professor and Acting Chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "At the graduate level, we now have first-class facilities for research in computer engineering. At the undergraduate level, we have two completely modernized laboratories for courses and projects that focus on both the hardware and software aspects of computer engineering. These facilities will positively impact almost every student studying in this important field."

The laboratories were dedicated on Tuesday, May 29, in a ceremony held at the University. Bruce Hamilton, President, BAE SYSTEMS Technology Services Sector and Mark Ronald, President and CEO of BAE Systems North America joined C.D. (Dan) Mote, President of the University, William W. Destler, Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School, and Nariman Farvardin, Dean of the Clark School of Engineering for the dedication.

The day included tours of each of the four laboratories, hosted by six computer engineering faculty members and 24 students.

The first graduate-level research facility, the Systems and Computer Architecture Laboratory, is the department’s first lab dedicated to exploring new computer architectures and compiler technologies. Equipped with high-end workstations and software for computer architecture study and simulation, research activity in the facility includes the study of Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) technologies, memory organization, control speculation, instruction-level parallelism hardware, multi-threaded architectures, memory prefetching, and compilation for desktop and embedded systems.

The Systems and Computer Architecture Laboratory is home to the first detailed, realistic study of computer memory (DRAM) conducted in the last decade. The goal of this research is to design faster memory architectures, which is important because while computer processor speeds are projected to continue to grow by 50% per year (1000 MHz processors will jump to 2000 MHz processors, etc.), memory speeds are projected to grow only by 7% per year. A major bottleneck to improving overall computer performance, then, is slower memory, and this research aims at reversing that trend.

Other focuses in the laboratory include building better and faster microprocessors, enhancing memory systems, finding ways to help computers process more tasks in parallel, and methods for optimizing programming code during the compilation process so it is more efficient and utilizes less power.

The second graduate-level facility, the Embedded Systems Research Laboratory, is dedicated to research on the design, implementation, and application of embedded systems, or systems that exist “within” larger systems. Faculty and students in the lab are looking at the hardware/software co-design of embedded systems that could be used for cell phones and digital cameras. The goal is to create systems that are faster, cheaper, consume less power, and are brought to market more rapidly.

Other areas of research in the lab include computer-aided design, processor architecture, compiler technology, real-time systems, the application domains of computer security, digital signal processing, neural computation, and robotics. The lab is equipped with ultra-fast workstations, development tools for Texas Instruments DSP processors, and software used for modeling and simulating of heterogeneous embedded systems.

The two undergraduate facilities were designed primarily to teach an upper-level Microcomputer Laboratory course and for student projects in computer engineering. In the Computer Engineering Instructional Laboratory, students work in small groups on hardware-oriented experiments that involve the application of microprocessors and programmable logic to typical problems of low-level control and data acquisition. The Computer Engineering Project Laboratory is used for a senior-level project that involves team-based design, as well as the prototyping and testing of a microprocessor-based system that involves a hierarchy of computers and networks which connects a user-presentation layer to a physical-device layer.

BAE SYSTEMS is a world-class systems, defense and aerospace prime contractor that combines key in-depth skills in naval platforms, military aircraft, intelligent electronic systems, information technology, and systems engineering. With this ability, BAE SYSTEMS offers outstanding complementary capabilities to customers across the main defense sectors, as well as in the civil aircraft market.

BAE SYSTEMS North America operates in 30 states nationwide, including the District of Columbia. With over 22,000 employees, they design, integrate, manufacture and support a wide range of advanced aerospace products and intelligent electronic systems for government and commercial customers.