Senior Researcher
IMEC
Leuven, Belgium

Lecture 1: Friday, 18 July 2008 (14h00-15h00) CO3

A roadmap for 3D technologies and their design opportunities
3D integration offers numerous opportunities for design, and is probably the best hope for carrying ICs along (and even beyond) the path of Moore's Law in the 21st century. However, many questions still need to be answered to take advantage of 3D. First, what will become the mainstream 3D technology? Today, many technology options are proposed, but each having different cost, design and implications. Secondly, how to make 3D designs reliable? Many unknowns still exist related to thermal load, reliability and signal integrity challenges. Finally, what about design solutions/methods and architectural modifications for 3D integration? In this talk, an attempt will be made to roadmap 3D technologies and their design implications.


Lecture 2: Friday, 18 July 2008 (15h15-16h15) CO3

Path Finding - a design/technology co-exploration
To identify the 3D technology options that best fit the target system, it is mandatory to co-explore both technology and design options. The contribution of this talk is to introduce a path finding methodology to untangle the many intertwined design/technology options. This holistic approach will be applied on a representative 3D case study. Initial results will be presented that demonstrate the benefits of the proposed path finding methodology to steer the technology development and fine-tune design strategies.


About the speaker:
Paul Marchal received the engineering degree and Ph.d. in electrical engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium in 1999 and 2005 resp. He holds now a position as senior researcher at IMEC, Leuven. Dr. Marchal's research interests are in all aspects of design of digital systems, with special emphasis on 3D design and technology-aware design techniques for low-power systems.