Ben Chaffin
I am a senior computer
science major at Williams
College. This is a pretty bare-bones page, created mainly to make
the results of my thesis available and
to post my resume. I've also listed some
collections of links that I wish I had been able to find in one place
when I was looking for them.
My Resume ,
last updated 2/18/98.
Aperiodic Tiling
- Snapshots from my senior thesis
investigating properties of the Danzer tiling. You can also visit my
advisor, Duane
Bailey, a true wizard.
Free Circuit Design Tools
Also known as schematic capture, circuit layout, or digital
simulation. There are lots of these listed at Prime Time Freeware in three pages
on CAD systems (pages 9508, 9509, and 9510). The ones I found useful
are listed below.
- The Chipmunk
Tools provide fairly sophisticated visual layout and simulation
with an interface that is efficient and easy to learn. Custom gates
can be specified in a generic HDL. I used it to design and debug
circuits of up to 3000 pins.
-
Magic
is an excellent visual VLSI layout tool based on Mead & Conway's
hierarchical design methodology and their scale-independent design
rules. Magic comes with a simulator, but it is separate from the
layout system and text-based. You can get a chip fabricated directly
from the Magic netlist by
MOSIS, a production
service at USC that specializes in small-quantity runs.
SPARC Assembly References
- The authoritative source:
Sun's online docs . Section 5, "Instruction Set Mapping" has a
complete but rather difficult to read description of the instruction set.
- A SPARC
compiler course at the University of Manitoba. This page has class
notes and a guide to the instruction set. The guide is available
locally as well in case it disappears
from U Manitoba.
- Principles of
Computer Architecture is an online textbook designed for an intro
architecture course. The entire book is available in PostScript and
PDF format.
- Using as: an HTML version of the as gnu-info documentation. A useful
reference when reading compiler output, especially the listing of
assembler directives. No information on SPARC assembly, but explains
SPARC-specific directives.
- A SPARC Assembler:
description of the design of a SPARC V8 assembler and the source code
for it.
Search Engines
Recreation and Miscellany