New directions in system design automation

I take this opportunity with great pleasure to thank Prof. Pravin Varaiya for his guidance over the past fifteen years not only in my academic research but also at Teja Technologies, Inc. In this chapter I have outlined some of the emerging themes in system design particularly for network equipment. Factors such as the proprietary nature of many of the developments, the rapid pace of change in the field, and also the desire to keep out material that may appear promotional of commercial interests have required this chapter to be kept at a fairly general level. My doctoral thesis work with Prof. Varaiya dealt with the modeling, analysis and control of hybrid systems - i.e., systems which combined continuous and discrete state dynamics [I]. Subsequently, as a member of a research team at California PATH Laboratory of the UC-Berkeley, directed by Prof. Varaiya, I contributed to the development of a hybrid system specification and simulation system called SHIFT [2]. After forming Teja Technologies, Inc., where Prof. Varaiya was on the Board of Directors for several years, I continued the core work on a commercial basis with emphasis on high-performance execution applied to fast path network applications.