ICS Seminar: Prof. Vladimir Stojanovic from UC Berkeley

Posted on November 8, 2013

Location:
Building: UT Austin POB(ACES) 2.402
Room Number: 2.402
201 East 24th St
Austin,  Texas
United States 78712

Date:  November 14, 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm

Abstract: Chip design is radically changing. This period of change is
a very exciting time in integrated circuit and system design. On one
hand, cross-layer design approaches need to be invented to improve
system performance despite CMOS scaling slowdown. On the other, a
variety of emerging devices are lined-up to extend or potentially
surpass the capabilities of CMOS technology, but require key
innovations at the integration, circuits and system levels. This
lecture describes how monolithic integration of photonic links can
revolutionize the VLSI chip design, dramatically improving its
performance and energy-efficiency. Limited scaling of both on-chip and
off-chip interconnects, coupled with CMOS scaling slowdown have led to
energy-efficiency and bandwidth density constraints that are emerging
fast as the major performance bottlenecks in embedded and
high-performance digital systems. While optical interconnects have
shown promise in extensive architectural studies to date, significant
challenges need to be overcome both in device and circuit design as
well as the integration strategy. We illustrate how our cross-layer
approach guides the system design by connecting process, device and
circuit optimizations to system-level metrics, exposing the inherent
trade-offs and design sensitivities. Our experimental platforms
demonstrate the technology potential at the system level and provide
feedback to modeling and device design. In particular, we’ll describe
the recent breakthroughs in monolithic photonic memory interface
platform with fastest and most energy-efficient modulators
demonstrated in a 45nm process node. Based on these design principles
and technology demonstrations, we project that in the next decade
tailored hybrid (electrical/optical) integrated systems will provide
orders of magnitude performance improvements at the system level and
revolutionize the way we build future VLSI systems. Moreover, just
like integrating the inductor into CMOS at the end of 1990s
revolutionized the RF design and enabled mobile revolution,
integration of silicon-photonic active and passive devices with CMOS
is greatly positioned to revolutionize a number of analog and
mixed-signal applications – low-phase noise signal sources and large
bandwidth, high-resolution ADCs, to name a few.

Bio: Vladimir Stojanovic is an Associate Professor of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science at University of California,
Berkeley. His research interests include design, modeling and
optimization of integrated systems, from CMOS-based VLSI blocks and
interfaces to system design with emerging devices like NEM relays and
silicon-photonics. He is also interested in design and implementation
of energy-efficient electrical and optical networks, and digital
communication techniques in high-speed interfaces and high-speed
mixed-signal IC design. Vladimir received his Ph.D. in Electrical
Engineering from Stanford University in 2005, and the Dipl. Ing.
degree from the University of Belgrade, Serbia in 1998. He was also
with Rambus, Inc., Los Altos, CA, from 2001 through 2004 and with MIT
as Associate Professor from 2005-2013. He received the 2006 IBM
Faculty Partnership Award, and the 2009 NSF CAREER Award as well as
the 2008 ICCAD William J. McCalla, 2008 IEEE Transactions on Advanced
Packaging, and 2010 ISSCC Jack Raper best paper awards. He is an IEEE
Solid-State Circuits Society Distinguished Lecturer for the 2012-2013
term.