Professor
Department of Computer Engineering
Vice Rector for Research
Politecnico di Torino, Itay

 

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Viable Paths Towards Graphene Circuits: Implementation Styles and Logic Synthesis Tools

Friday, 11 December 2015 at 11:20 in room BC 420

 

Abstract:

Due to its unique structure, graphene shows astounding electrical properties (e.g., high mobility), combined with unique mechanical characteristics, like transparency and stretchability. These features make this material a potential vehicle for highly scaled flexible ICs.

Unfortunately, pristine graphene is a semimetal rather than a semiconductor and it cannot be used, as is, to implement FETs. While most of the current research activities are facing the problem of opening a band-gap by means of invasive chemical process, we are addressing this issue from a different angle, that is, by introducing efficient integration strategies that exploit the intrinsic properties of the material, rather than trying to modifying them.

Aim of this talk is to present our recent achievements in this field and, in particular, to show a new implementation style for all-graphene logic circuits. The proposed circuit solution, together with a dedicated logic synthesis flow that better exploits the high expressive power made available by brand-new graphene logic primitives, has superlative power/delay figures that perfectly match the requirements of ultra-low power applications.

About the speaker:

Enrico Macii was born in Torino, Italy, on February 7, 1966. He is a Full Professor of Computer Engineering at Politecnico di Torino. Prior to that, he was an Associate Professor (from 1998 to 2001) and an Assistant Professor (from 1993 to 1998) at the same institution. From 1991 to 1997 he was also an Adjunct Faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He holds a Laurea Degree in Electrical Engineering from Politecnico di Torino (1990), a Laurea Degree in Computer Science from Università di Torino (1991) and a PhD degree in Computer Engineering from Politecnico di Torino (1995). Since 2007, he is the Vice Rector for Research at Politecnico di Torino; he was also the Rector’s Delegate for Technology Transfer (2009-2015) and for International Affairs (2012-2015).

His research interests are in the design of electronic digital circuits and systems, with particular emphasis on low-power consumption aspects. In the last few years, he has extended his research activities to the broad area of bioinformatics, providing algorithmic contributions, adapted and/or extended from the circuit design research sector, to new image processing techniques and various types of data analyses for different applications in the biomedical domain. Finally, he has been growingly involved in projects focusing on the development of new technologies, methodologies and policies for achieving energy efficiency in buildings, districts and cities, therefore addressing multi-disciplinary activities regarding clean energy deployment, low-pollution mobility, sustainable urban development, pointing towards the actuation of the concept of smart city.