John J. Granacki

Director, Advanced Systems Division
USC/Information Sciences Institute

USC/Information Sciences Institute
4676 Admiralty Way Suite 1000
Marina Del Rey, CA 90292, U.S.A.
Voice: (310) 822-1511 x770
Fax: (310) 823-6714
Pager: (888) 424-2651 email: granacki@isi.edu

Education

Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, 1986
Engineer, Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, 1982
M.S., Physics, Drexel University, 1970
B.A., Physics, Rutgers University, 1968

Research Interests

John's current professional interests include: data intensive systems; embedded systems; wireless computing systems; distributed computing systems; tools for system-level specification and models of system behavior; tools for designing and analyzing adaptable/reconfigurable computing systems.

Recent Research

Problem Statement and Objective

As technology allows higher and higher packaging densities at the chip, module and board levels, the task of designing and implementing computer systems is becoming increasing complex.

Furthermore, the rapidly evolving fabrication technologies requires system designers to continually monitor changes in manufacturing details and to incorporate these details into CAD tools and designs.

Our objective is to develop tools that automatically incorporate the details of the fabrication technologies and allow the designer to focus on the system-design problem. These tools allow designer to make high-level trade-offs and analyze multiple design iterations quickly facilitating the rapid prototyping of complex designs.



Method of Solution

We are developing improved models of the design process based on techniques borrowed from data-flow analysis, Petri Nets and programming languages. To test these models, we have developed and implemented a Library Browser, a Design Flow Manager and an Automatic Script Generation Tool that allow novice designers to produce realizable physical implementations of systems.

We are also working on enhanced estimators for the physical design of systems that can be used in high-level synthesis and can dramatically shorten the time it takes to perform a design iteration.



Expected Significance

Our tools have already been used by several teams of academic researchers to successfully implement their experimental computer systems. Using these tools reduced the cost and time required to prototype these systems and allowed researchers to focus on system instead of implementation issues.

Selected Publications

1. Ivan Hom and John Granacki, "Estimation of the Number of Routing Layers and Total Wirelength in a PCB through Wiring Distribution Analysis," in Proceedings of the European Design Automation Conference, pp. 310-315, September, 1996.

2. Sally A. Hayati, Alice C.Parker and John J. Granacki, Representation of Control and Timing Behavior with Applications to Interface Synthesis, In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Design, October 1988.

3. John J. Granacki, Alice C. Parker and Yigal Arens, Understanding System Specifications Written in Natural Language, In Proceedings of the Tenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, August 1987.