Immersed Boundary Method

So what is my thesis on………

The implementation of the Immersed Boundary (IB) Method on an FPGA is the focus of my thesis.  Software or PC-only implementations (Matlab) exist, but we are concerned with hardware implementation.  Once we have achieved a successful hardware implementation, the results will be compared to the results already acheived with software.  The goal is to simulate the IB in Hardware in less time than software, utilizing the advantages of the parallelisms and architecture within an FPGA.

So what is the IB?….the IB can be thought of as the interaction between incompressible fluid flow with an elastic/flexible material.  A great example of the IB is a vein in fluid or heart muscle in fluid.  The fluid has different velocities which are mapped to a cartesian grid.  The vein is segmented into fiber points (imagine a 2D slice of a vein…a bunch of dots in a circular pattern) which also have some velocity.

Here is wiki’s definition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersed_boundary_method

Since I am a visual learner…..here is a simulation of the heart pumping, performed at NYU:

Credit: Dr. Charles Peskin (One of the Pioneers in the IB Method)

The interaction can be broken down into a few categories: interpolate, spread, and fluid solver.  Interpolate…

VHDL is in the HOUSE

Saving myself the headache and heartbreak, I have decided to VPN into RIT and use the Xilinx Development Tools for Free!  Early on, I was considering purchasing DirectVHDL for the Mac OS X, but I don’t get a good feeling when I try to find reviews on it and nothing but promotional websites appear.  Also, it appears to be missing a synthesis/schematic viewer.

Here are some great VHDL references:

• 
  http://esd.cs.ucr.edu/labs/tutorial/
  
• 
  https://www.ida.liu.se/~TDTS01/lectures/
  

Side note – A couple of other attempts to find a native MAC OS X VHDL Tool fell flat!  The most legitimate might have been
http://eng-osx.sourceforge.net/GHDL.html
.  The most logical explanation for the lack of native tools is that MAC OS X users can boot into windows or linux and use a open source tool for free.  So why spend the money on a native Mac Tool?  Supply and Demand.

Milestones

3/13/11 – Milestones, IB Method Research (Fixed Point Implementation and Interpolate AccelDSP/FPGA – Peskin/Ferencz Papers)

3/20/11 – Preliminary Hardware Implementation Diagram and Parallel Implementation

4/3/11 – Round 1 – “FPGA Implementation of IB Method” Research

4/10/11 – Interpolate Step w/ VHDL

Hello world!

How appropriate, the default subject line of the first post is “Hello World!”.  The phrase can be found at the introduction of any programming language textbook.  Scholars use “Hello World!” as a tool to demonstrate the ability of a programming language (C, C++, Objective C, Javascript, and etc.). 

My first program ever was……………

// my first program in C++

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main ()
{
  cout << "Hello World!";
  return 0;
}