Challenges and Innovations for Development of SoCs

 Steve Kang, Dean of Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering, Professor , UC Santa Cruz, CA - USA (Visiting Professor at EPFL-STI-LSM)

 

Abstract: In this talk we will review a history of integrated circuits and various technological end engineering challenges in developing a state-of-the-art System-on-a-Chip (SoC). More importantly we will also discuss innovative engineering solutions that help overcome barriers to Moore's Law, especially for development of SoCs. In particular we will discuss the thermal issues and on-chip micro-refrigerator, excessive leakage currents and circuit techniques to reduce leakages, bidirectional I/O circuits for overcoming I/O bottleneck, optical limits in mask pattern transfer, and nonlinear programming based adaptive optical lithography correction for accurate pattern transfer onto silicon surface, circuit-level design optimization through device sizing to minimize circuit's sensitivity to statistical variations for manufacturability, and 3D integration trends.

About the speaker: Steve Kang obtained his Ph.D. degree from UC Berkeley in 1975, spent about 10 years at AT&T Bell Labs until he joined the ECE faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 1985. At UIUC, he served as professor of electrical and computer engineering, associate director of NSF engineering research center for compound semiconductor microelectronics, and department head (1995-2000). In Jan. 2001, he joined the UC Santa Cruz as Dean, Baskin School of Engineering. He was a visiting professor of EPFL in 1989, Univ. of Karlsruhe in 1996 and Technical Univ. of Munich in 1997, and visiting chair professor of KAIST in 2003. He is a fellow of IEEE, ACM, AAAS and has served as President of IEEE Circuits and Systems Society in 1991, Founding Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Trans on VLSI Systems, and on the editorial board of Prof. of the IEEE.


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