Curtin Sarawak secures MOSTI grant for research into Efficient Low Power System-on-Chip Architectures

Miri – 6 November 2012 – A research project team from the School of Engineering and Science at Curtin University, Sarawak Malaysia (Curtin Sarawak) has secured a RM137,000 grant from the Malaysian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI)  to conduct research into Efficient Low Power System-on-Chip Architectures.

Led by Associate Professor Dr. Ashutosh Kumar Singh, who is head of the school’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the team also comprises Electrical & Computer Engineering senior lecturer Dr. Low Siow Yong and lecturer Lenin Gopal.

The team will collaborate with other researchers, namely Dhiraj K. Pradhan (University of Bristol, United Kingdom), Chandana Prasad (Charles Sturt University, Australia), and Amaluddin Yusoff (Shell) on the project.

Pro Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of Curtin Sarawak, Professor Ian Kerr, remarked that the grant was a wonderful achievement and congratulated Associate Professor Dr. Ashutosh and his team on their success in obtaining the grant.

He added that it was a testimony to the commitment of both Curtin Sarawak and the federal government towards enhancing Curtin Sarawak’s and the nation’s R&D capabilities.

According to Associate Professor Dr. Ashutosh, the project involves proposing a framework for architectural and software power, delay and energy estimation. It will use RTL simulation and synthesis tools to estimate the delay and power of the blocks in single-chip architectures, with a processor and memory for each mode, as well as create energy vs. delay graphs for each architectural block.

The estimates and graphs will be used by software estimators, with peripheral models created, to estimate the power, delay and energy consumption of the system while running a software task.

Curtin Sarawak is the largest international campus of Western Australia’s Curtin University, which is a member of the Australian Technology Network (ATN) and widely recognised for its practical research focused on solving real-world problems.

Curtin University has achieved tremendous progress to become a world-class research intensive university within the next 20 years. According to the 2011 Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) results, its research performance has achieved world standard or higher rankings in 20 discipline groups.

Like its mother campus at Bentley in Perth, Curtin Sarawak has a thriving community of research staff and students who are engaged in research areas across science and engineering, social sciences and business.

It currently counts around 100 academic staff in its School of Engineering and Science and School of Business and, of those who teach at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, more than 40 percent are PhD-holders. Over 80 percent teaching at degree level are research-active and this number is expected to increase further in the near future.

Academics of the Department of Electronic and Communication Engineering have contributed to raising Curtin Sarawak’s overall research performance through their research and development efforts and have secured numerous research grants from MOSTI and other external funding agencies.

Furthermore, they engage in external collaborations which keep them up-to-date on industry requirements and practices, and facilitate the delivery of the most relevant lectures, practicals and tutorials.

According to Associate Professor Dr. Ashutosh, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is presently collaborating with many renowned universities worldwide such as University of Bristol in the United Kingdom; Hong Kong Polytechnic University; and the Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University in India.

He said the Department is keen to strengthen its research capacity, focusing on three main areas of research – renewable energy, signal processing and computer-aided design.

(L-R) Lenin Gopal, Associate Professor Dr. Ashutosh Kumar Singh and Dr. Low Siow Yong.