Located on the fifth floor, the High
Performance Lab is comfortably nestled away in a well designed modern
building called the Computer Studies Building. CSB for short, this building
houses various offices and laboratories of the Electrical and Computer Engineering
department. Comprising of seven floors and entirely made up of red brick and
plate glass windows, the Computer Studies Building is an ingenious mix of
tradition and modernity.
Stepping out of the elevator on the fifth floor, an innocuous looking door
on the right leads into the
spacious, well lit, state of the art VLSI/IC lab. An entire wall comprises
of well moulded windows that present a great view of red brick buildings,
green trees and the historic Rush Rhees Library in the background.
Environment
This is the home away from home for Kevin Tang, Andrey
Mezhiba, Dimitris Velenis and Volkan Kursun. Hard at work at
their own projects, one senses a real sense of teamwork within
the professional environment. The lab is designed to allow privacy while
facilitating group work, essentials for academic achievement and progress.
The lab encourages hard work and community. Fully carpeted and well lit, the
lab seems to provide the ideal comfort zone for the hard at work engineers.
Equipment
Equipped with six Sun stations, two INTEL processors - providing
Windows and Linux platforms,
an IBM thinkpad, a PowerMac, scanner, printers, the lab breathes cutting edge
hardware. In the back of the lab, workbenches are fitted with oscilloscopes,
microscopes, CMOS analysis processors. In this manner, the lab is a synthesis of academia
and physical analytical work.