Professor
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI - USA
Webpage

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

Pushing Nanoscale CMOS: Design-related Challenges
This talk will give an overview of the major challenges facing nanoscale CMOS in the sub-45nm regime from a design, and by extension CAD tool, perspective. Particular emphasis will be placed on power consumption, process variability, and reliability concerns. The inherent contradictions between low-power and robust design will be highlighted with views on how to resolve these contradictions in order to extend the lifespan of CMOS are presented. A central theme of the talk will be that successfully addressing nanoscale CMOS design concerns requires coordination across many levels of design, including devices, circuits, CAD, and architecture.

Lecture 2: Monday, 14 July 2008 (15h15-16h15) CO3

Extending Nanoscale CMOS: Analyze, Sense, Correct, and Exploit
Building upon the earlier talk, this presentation will detail ongoing work that seeks to work around, or work with, the problems inherent in extremely scaled CMOS technologies. The topics range from the optimization of mechanically induced stress to improve performance or provide a better power/performance tradeoff point than is currently achieved, to efforts in creating reliable systems out of unreliable components that are based on massive in situ sensing of degradation. The talk will also touch on alternative paths to traditional statistical static timing analysis in light of process variability, demonstrating that intelligent sampling methods can lead to fast Monte Carlo-based timing analysis.


About the speaker:
Dennis Sylvester received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1999 and is now an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He previously held research staff positions in the Advanced Technology Group of Synopsys, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, and a visiting professorship in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National University of Singapore. He has published over 200 articles along with one book and several book chapters in his field of research, which includes low-power circuit design and design automation techniques, design-for-manufacturability, and interconnect modeling.