Let’s build high-performance computers

TANAKA Laboratory
Professor：TANAKA Kiyofumi

E-mail：
［Research areas］
Computer Architecture, Real-Time Embedded Systems
［Keywords］
Memory system, Caches, energy reduction, FPGA, real-time scheduling, embedded OS

Skills and background we are looking for in prospective students

Our researches are based on knowledge of “Digital Logic and Computer Design”, ”Computer Architecture”, and “Operating Systems”. In most researches, sufficient skills for programming as well as enthusiasm for high performance and/or energy reduction are required.

What you can expect to learn in this laboratory

By carrying out researches, students are well-trained for various, important ability for investigation, problem finding, resolution, planning, implementation, evaluation, writing reports, and presentation, which are all required in the future career. In particular, from experience of designing computer hardware logic, they can learn to image concurrent behaviors of objects and realize them, leading to issue resolution.

【Job category of graduates】 Information/communication-processing industry

Research outline

In our life environment, computers are embedded everywhere, e.g., mobile phones, home appliances, networking equipment, and vehicles, where real-time property is often required. Along with growing demands for IoT devices, we study how to build systems with efficient real-time processing, from a viewpoint of both hardware and basic software. Especially, we design actual systems for empirical researches.

■ Real-time embedded systems

Real-Time Embedded RISC Processor
Embedded processors must have low cost and low energy consumption. In addition, response performance is important for control applications. We extend conventional RISC architecture and design real-time embedded RISC core with multi-contexts And efficient cache memory, which makes response performance much higher.

Real-Time Embedded Operating System
In real-time systems, high response time performance as well as meeting real-time constraints is important. To improve the response time, use of appropriate scheduling policies is indispensable. We develop real-time embedded operating systems which improve real-time processing as much as possible by taking dynamic behavior into account while conforming to the common API standard of embedded operating systems

■ Cryptography Accelerator

Cryptography is indispensable in today's ICT environments. Especially, in embedded/IoT devices, compact and efficient processing of cryptography should be provided. We provide cryptography systems dedicated to embedded systems by designing elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) accelerators on FPGAs. The advantages are acceleration with parallelism based on dataflow and resistance to side-channel attacks.

■ Other researches

Accelerators for Deep Learning Hardware, Adaptation/configuration of processors/OS, system implementation on FPGA, low-energy consumption architecture, real-time resource management, implementation of RISC-V processors, etc.

Key publications

1. T.Suzuki, K.Tanaka, “Real-time Scheduling Algorithm with Execution Right Delegation for Multiprocessor,” Journal of Information Processing, Vol.31, pp.67-77, 2023.
2. K.Tanaka, A.Miyaji, Y.Jin, “Efficient FPGA Design of Exception-Free Generic Elliptic Curve Cryptosystems,” Proc. of 19th International COnference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security (ACNS), LNCS 12726, pp.393-414, 2021.
3. Y.Chen, K.Tanaka, “Acceleration of Residual Binarized Neural Network,” Proc. of the 23rd Workshop on Synthesis And System Integration of Mixed Information technologies (SASIMI), pp.126-131, 2021. (Outstanding Paper Award)

Equipment

Linux/Solaris servers and storages
FPGA evaluation boards
FPGA development environment
CAD/Verification tools
Measuring equipment (oscilloscope, logic analyzer)