In 1989 5 investigators at the University of Cincinnati (UC) and the
University of Virginia (UVa) received funding from DARPA to begin
investigations of parallel CAD with VHDL.  The program was named QUEST and
ran from 1989-98.  Dr. Wilsey began investigations of parallel VHDL
simulation by writing a simulation kernel and code generator using a
commercially available VHDL analyzer/intermediate.  Dr. Wilsey also
received funding (with Dr. Debra Hensgen and Dr. Harold Carter) from the US
Air Force for distributed simulation of VHDL.  This project ran from
1993-95 and was called the VAST project.  From 1989 through 1995, the
parallel simulation studies continued with the commercial VHDL front-end
analyzer and parallel VHDL simulation kernels (called, respectively, QUEST
and VAST).  Throughout these investigations, the lack of adequate
documentation and ongoing changes made to the intermediate form from the
commercial analyzer were an ongoing source of frustration.  As a result
several of the other investigators in the QUEST program developed their own
VHDL analyzers.  In addition, several other research programs around the
world were also developing low grade, project specific VHDL analyzers.

In the summer of 1993, Dr. Philip A. Wilsey began the SAVANT project
working in his spare time.  He authored the original system, including the
parser, the extensible intermediate form, the type checking, the transmute
system, and the VHDL republishing.  In January of 1995, the QUEST/VAST
parallel simulation kernels were redesigned by Dale Martin, Tim McBrayer,
Lantz Moore, John Penix, and Wilsey into the TyVIS and WARPED components
that are now used to realize the SAVANT simulation capability.

In 1995, Wilsey and MTL Systems gained funding from the US Air Force
Research Labs to support development of the SAVANT analyzer and parallel
simulation capabilities.  Dr. John Hines, Al Scarpelli, Scott Bilik, and
Dr. Greg Peterson were instrumental in the continued support and management
of SAVANT funding.  One of the principle motivations for the SAVANT project
was the development of a VHDL analyzer with a well-documented, stable
intermediate form that researchers could freely use.

In 1995, Dale Martin joined the project as a full-time software engineer.
Dale continued the development of the type checking system.  That fall,
Dr. John Willis and Dr. Wilsey decided to collaborate on a common
intermediate, and the AIRE intermediate representation was created.  Dale
converted SAVANT to utilize the AIRE intermediate representation, wrote the
first set of "configure" scripts (with aid from Lantz Moore), and packaged
SAVANT for the Debian Linux distribution.

In total, the following projects have contributed directly or indirectly to
the development of the SAVANT software:

    Name     Cycle      Agency       Contract Number
    -------------------------------------------------
    SAVANT   1995-98    Air Force    F33615-95-C-1638
    VAST     1993-95    Air Force    F33615-93-C-1301
    QUEST II 1993-98    DARPA/FBI    J-FBI-93-116
    QUEST    1989-93    DARPA/FBI    J-FBI-89-094

In addition, the following researchers have contributed to one or more
components of the SAVANT software:

    Sandeep Aji
    Peter J. Ashenden
    Vijay Balakrishnan
    Scott Bilik
    Dr. Harold W. Carter
    David Charley
    Praveen Chawla
    Malolan Chetlur
    John Collier
    Loy M. D'Souza
    Jorgen Dahl
    Magnus Danielson
    Fabrizio Ferrandi
    Peter Frey
    Joe Fleischmann
    Dr. Debra A. Hensgen
    Dr. John Hines
    Herb Hirsch
    Balakrishnan Kannikeswaran
    Venkatram Krishnaswamy
    Tim McBrayer
    Lantz Moore
    John More
    Avinash Palaniswamy
    John Penix
    Dr. Greg D. Peterson
    Phani K. Putrevu
    Ramaman Radhakrishnan
    Raghunandan Rajan
    Umesh K. V. Rajasekaran
    Dhananjai Madhava Rao
    Derek Rutten
    Al Scarpelli
    Girindra D. Sharma
    Ardhendu Singh
    Krishnan Subramani
    Narayanan V. Thondugulam
    Christopher H. Young
    Dr. John Willis
    Dr. Philip A. Wilsey

In 1998 the full-time development of SAVANT at UC ended and maintenance has
been continued by Dale Martin and Philip A. Wilsey on a voluntary basis.
In 1999, Magnus Danielson (the "mad swede" :-)) joined the fray and
contributed a greatly improved build system based on automake, and many
other bug fixes and improvements.
