Embedded Tutorial 1

The new Scaling Trend: Many Core Systems-on-Chips. Opportunities and Challenges for Supporting the New Exponential

Yehea Ismail, Northwestern University
Yehia Massoud, Rice University

Abstract

Scaling as we know it is taking a different direction from the last three decades. systems-on-chips with tens of billions of transistors and hundreds of cores is expected to be the future of scaling. These chips will achieve performance through parallelism and application specific optimized cores. This trend will use superior technologies to integrate more cores on a chip rather than to push the frequency envelope as in the past. It is expected that every aspect of design and analysis will need to be modified to accommodate this new platform and trend.  There is a clear need for new CAD tools and design methodologies that are very different from existing tools in both their focus and
scope.
This tutorial will delve into the specific challenges with respect to both design and CAD that is require for these many core chips. The tutorial will also provide an overview into the market and technology factors guiding and driving this trend. The tutorial will provide an overview of our research efforts in several of key challenges facing the realization of high performance SOCs, such as networks on a chip, cache for many cores, 3-D technologies, variability-aware analog/RF design automation. Attendees will be provided with insight into both present and future research vectors to support this nascent exponential.

Biography of Speakers

Yehea Ismail was born in Giza, Egypt on November 16, 1971. He attended the school of engineering, Department of Electronics and Communications at Cairo University from 1988-1993 where he received his B.Sc. degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering with distinction and honors. As one of the top of his class, he was appointed as a teacher assistant at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cairo University on August 1993. He received his first Masters degree in Electronics from Cairo University (distinction), Egypt on June 1996. He came to the University of Rochester on September 1996 where he received his second Masters in Electrical Engineering in 1998 and his Ph.D. on April 2000. He is currently with Northwestern University as an Associate Professor.
Yehea Ismail is the chair elect of the CAS VLSI Technical Committee, Associate Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems , was on the editorial board of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I. Fundamental Theory and Applications, and a guest editor for a special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems on “On-Chip Inductance in High Speed Integrated Circuits”. He has also chaired many conferences. Professor Ismail was selected as the 2002 IEEE circuits and systems society outstanding young author award winner, National Science Foundation Career Award in 2002. Prof. Ismail has been given the best teacher award in the ECE department, Northwestern University in 2003. He has coauthored more than 100 technical papers and a book, and several book chapters. He was with IBM Microelectronics from 1997-1999. His primary research interests include interconnect, noise, innovative circuit simulation, and related circuit level issues in high performance VLSI circuits.

Yehia Massoud received the BSc. (Distinction with honors) and the MSc. degree in Electronics and Telecommunication from Cairo University, Egypt. He received his PhD degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999. He joined Rice University in July 2003, where he is the director of the Rice Automated Nanoscale Design Group (RAND), an Associate professor in the departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science and a fellow of both the Rice Quantum Institute and the Lab of Nanophotonics. He is a recipient of the
National Science Foundation CAREER Award for 2004. Before joining Rice University, he was a member of the Technical Staff at the Advanced Technology Group at Synopsys Inc., Mountain View, CA from 1999 to 2003, where he received the Synopsys Special Recognition Engineering Award in 2000. He has authored/coauthored over 120 papers in international journals and conferences. Dr. Massoud leads research efforts targeting variability-aware optimization, modeling, and automated synthesis techniques for analog/RF/Mixed signal circuits and systems as well as developing Interconnect-Centric Network-on-Chip Analysis and Thermally-Aware Design Methodologies. Prof. Massoud leads parallel research efforts targeting the modeling and design of both carbon nanotubes
and nanophotonic structures for future high performance on-chip communication and nanoscale integrated circuits as well as innovative nano-architectures. Dr. Massoud served as the technical program Co-chair of the ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI, GLSVLSI 2007, the CAD track cochair of the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, ISCAS 2007, and the VLSI track chair of GLSVLSI 2006. He currently serves on the Editorial board of the IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems, and Journal of Circuits, Systems, and Computers, JSCS. He has served on the technical program committees of many of the key conferences in Electronic Design Automation, VLSI, and Nanotechnology, such as ISCAS, ICCAD,
DATE, ISQED, and GLSVLSI.

 

 

Embedded Tutorial 2

Integrated Biosensors

Khaled Salama, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Abstract

Over the past few years, we have witnessed a significant increase in research on biological systems by engineers for environmental and biomedical diagnostics. Despite efforts to develop chips for biological assay detection, there continues to be a need to improve implementations of micro-scale detection and processing systems for further convenience, scaling and portability. These devices will lead to a significant cost-savings, throughput increases, and enable heretofore infeasible biological assays making “in the field” biological testing a reality. Thus infectious diseases can be detected rapidly and accurately onsite potentially averting the spread of illnesses or tainted foodstuffs. We will present the design and implementation of monolithic and hybrid sensors using integrated circuits, particularly in CMOS.

We will begin by providing the definitions and performance metrics of sensors and a brief overview of various noise processes. Subsequently, we will discuss the advantages and shortcomings of sensors built in silicon-based fabrication processes and examine, in detail, their integrated circuit topologies. Next, we will provide a comprehensive study of the design and analysis of CMOS integrated image sensors, integrated biosensors, and electronic backbone of MEMS hybrid sensors. Topics include: silicon photodetectors; CCD and CMOS sensor architectures and circuits; Affinity-based detection and biochemical transduction; optical, electrochemical, and mechanical transducer design; integrated microarrays, biochips, and sensor SoCs.

Biography of Speaker

Khaled Salama received his Bachelors degree with honors from the Electronics and Communications Department, Cairo University, Egypt in 1997 and the Masters and PhD degrees from the Electrical Engineering Department, Stanford University, USA in 2000 and 2005 respectively. He joined the Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering department  at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute an Assistant Professor in 2005. He  was elected to both IEEE Sensory systems and IEEE BioCircuits technical  committees in 2006. His work on low light detection and fully  integrated imagers has been funded by DARPA and NIH and was awarded the  Stanford-Berkeley Innovators Challenge Award in biological sciences. He coauthored 30 papers and 3 patents in the areas of high dynamic range CMOS image sensors (focal plane arrays), Vision Chips, biosensors, low-power mixed-signal
circuits for intelligent sensors and medical instrumentation

 

 

 

Embedded Tutorial 3

Design of Delta-Sigma Analog-to-Digital Converters

Anas Hamoui, McGill University
Hassan Aboushady, University of Paris VI

Abstract

Oversampling DS analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) offer a trade-off in data-converter design: they can achieve a high-resolution A/D conversion using low-accuracy analog components, but require higher sampling rates and more complex digital circuits than Nyquist-rate ADCs. Further, oversampling eliminates the need for a precision sample-and-hold circuit and relaxes the requirements on the anti-aliasing filter at the ADC input. Thus, a DS ADC is particularly attractive for achieving a high-resolution A/D conversion in standard digital CMOS technologies at low power dissipation. This tutorial describes design techniques and trade-offs for both discrete-time and continuous-time circuit implementations of DS ADCs.

Biography of Speakers

Anas A. Hamoui received the B.Eng. (Honors) degree from Kuwait University, Kuwait, in 1996, the M.Eng. degree from McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada, in 1998, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, in 2004, all in electrical engineering.
From 1996 to 1998, he was a Research Assistant at the Microelectronics and Computer Systems Laboratory, McGill University, working in the area of timing and power analysis of submicron CMOS digital circuits. From  1998 to 2004, he was a Research Assistant and a Part-Time Instructor with the Electronics Group, University of Toronto, working in the area of analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits for high-speed data communications. Since 2004, he has been an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University. He is the co-author (together with Prof. Ken Martin) of the book Delta-Sigma Data Converters in Low-Voltage Nanometer CMOS for Broadband Digital Communication (Springer, to be published in 2008).
Dr. Hamoui was awarded a Post-Graduate Scholarship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and a Henderson Research Fellowship from the University of Toronto for his doctoral research. He was also a recipient of the Outstanding Student Designer Award from Analog Devices Inc. At McGill University, he was elected for the “Professor of the Year” Award by the Electrical, Computer & Software Engineering Student Society for two consecutive years, for his teaching of microelectronic circuits to undergraduate students. The contributions of Dr. Hamoui to the teaching of microelectronic circuits also comprise writing the SPICE sections (including device models, circuit macromodels, and design examples) at the end of each chapter in the widely-utilized textbook Microelectronic Circuits (Oxford, 2005) by A. S. Sedra and K. C. Smith.

Hassan Aboushady received the B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt, in 1993, the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Paris VI (Pierre & Marie Curie), Paris, France in 1996 and 2002 respectively.
In 1999, he worked on the design of high resolution Sigma-Delta D/A converters at Philips Research Laboratories, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. In 2001, he worked on the implementation of a continuous-time Sigma-Delta modulator at STMicroelectronics, Crolles, France. In 2002, he was a post-doctoral research scientist at the Center of European Research in MicroElectronics working on design automation for analog integrated circuits. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Paris VI and his research interests include Sigma-Delta modulation, A/D and D/A conversion and design automation of analog and mixed-signal circuits. He is the author or co-author of more than 20 publications in these areas. He is the co-recipient of the 2004 best paper award (Interactive Presentation Track) in the IEEE Design Automation and Test in Europe Conference, as well as the 2nd and 3rd best student paper awards of the IEEE Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems in 2000 and 2003 respectively.