MARS: Microprogrammable accelerator for rapid simulations.

MARS is an exploratory project within Lab 1138. It is a hardware accelerator capable of efficiently implementing a wide range of event driven simulation algorithms. Its highly pipelined and parallel architecture is expected to provide a performance higher than presently available simulation engines. Microprogrammable and reconfigurable processors provide a high degree of flexibility. MARS is being designed and implemented using custom VLSI chips. Although the near term goals of MARS are for event driven simulations, the far term goals encompass a variety of applications both in the CAD and non-CAD areas.