Cyclical Progress in Design and Technology

Giovanni De Micheli

 EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

ABSTRACT: Progress in engineering systems is the result of the combined improvements of technology and design methods. It is often a cyclic process, stimulated by success and failure. When the innovation loop stalls in producing effective progress, a change in paradigm is needed. Many examples populate the history of science and engineering, as well as of mankind.

BIO: Giovanni De Micheli is a research scientist in electronics and computer science. He is credited for the invention of the Network on Chip design automation paradigm and for the creation of algorithms and design tools for Electronic Design Automation (EDA). He is Professor and Director of the Integrated Systems Laboratory at EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland. Previously, he was Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He was Director of the Electrical Engineering Institute at EPFL from 2008 to 2019 and program leader of the Swiss Federal Nano-Tera.ch program. He holds a Nuclear Engineer degree (Politecnico di Milano, 1979), a M.S. and a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (University of California at Berkeley, 1980 and 1983).

Prof. De Micheli is a Fellow of ACM, AAAS and IEEE, a member of the Academia Europaea and an International Honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His current research interests include several aspects of design technologies for integrated circuits and systems, such as synthesis for emerging technologies. He is also interested in heterogeneous platform design including electrical components and biosensors, as well as in data processing of biomedical information. He is author of: Synthesis and Optimization of Digital Circuits, McGraw-Hill, 1994, co-author and/or co-editor of ten other books and of over 900 technical publications. His citation h-index is above 100 according to Google Scholar. He is member of the Scientific Advisory Board of IMEC (Leuven, B) and STMicroelectronics.

Low-Coherence Semiconductor Lasers for Optical Wireless Communication and Low-Speckle Illumination

Boon S.Ooi

Electrical and Computer Engineering, KAUST

ABSTRACT: Highly coherent light, although beneficial in specific applications, suffers from the formation of speckles, resulting in poor imaging, lighting, and projection/display quality. Moreover, the long coherence length limits the resolution in interference-based sensing. This has led to the emergence of edge-emitting semiconductor low coherence light sources (e.g., broadband lasers, superluminescent diodes, etc.), which have been used in display applications, optical coherence tomography bioimaging, and quantum random bit generation. However, edge emission prevents the ease of fabricating two-dimensional arrays. Conversely, vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) have recently been widely used in consumer electronics due to the unique advantages of surface emission. Successfully development of the new class of low-coherence VCSEL array will open new opportunities for simultaneous illumination and optical wireless communication (OWC), and many other applications. In this talk, I will give a general overview on low-coherence edge-emitting lasers. I will focus my discussion on the recent development of the chaotic cavity-based low-coherence surface emitting lasers (LCSELs). The perspective of the fully integrated 2-D array LCSELs will also be discussed. Achieving a fully integrated array including complex electronic processing in the GHz range and heat management, we believe, will open the path for future integration in 6th-generation (6G) communication sub-systems and beyond with simultaneous high-quality lighting.

BIO: Boon S. Ooi (Fellow of NAI, IEEE, OSA, SPIE and InstP) is a Founding Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at KAUST. He was Director of KACST-Technology Innovation Center at KAUST from 2013-2021. His research interests include high-speed optoelectronics, optical wireless communications and distributed optical fiber sensors. He has trained a total of 36 PhD students and 17 postdocs, and placed them in top places in academia, industry, and government. He is an inventor/co-inventor of 38 issues US Patents. He received the following selected awards and honors: Khalifa International Award (UAE, 2023); PIFI Distinguished Scientist Award (CAS-China, 2021); Nokia Open Innovation Challenge (Finland, 2019). He served as Associate Editor then Senior Editor of the IEEE Photonics Journal, and Associate Editor of the Optics Express; served as Chair/Co-chair and/or on the technical program committee of CLEO, IPC, Photonics West, ISLC, and IEDM. Presently, he is Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

Memory and computing system under advanced technology

Alex See

Changxin Memory Technologies Inc., China

Abstract: Memory serves as a cornerstone for modern computing system. As technology advancement and scaling following Moore's Law, memory performance, power, area and cost (PPAC) get improved every generation. As Moore's Law reaching it's physical limits,memory technology scaling is hitting a wall and new 3D heterogeneous integration using advanced packaging technology becomes de factor solution for high-performance computing (HPC). Most recently,generative AI using large language model (LLM) steals the show as the ChatGPT from OpenAI provides a brand new user experience.Huge amount of data is required by ChatGPT for analysis in situ, which driving explorations of new memory architectures, like processing in or near memory (PIM/PNM).

This talk will introduce challenges facing with conventional Von Neumann architecture used in modern memory and computing systems. Then,a transition to achieve "more than Moore" is demonstrated by using advanced packaging technologies. Finally, high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and processing-in-memory (PIM) will be explored to create a domain specific memory solution for generative AI and other HPC applications.

BIO: With over two decades of experience in the semiconductor sector, Alex See has played key roles in technology development, research, and management at some of the industry's leading companies. Notably, Alex served as the Senior Director at both YMTC in Wuhan and SMIC in Shanghai, leading module process development and technology transfer activities. Prior to that, he was the Director of Advanced Module Technology Development at GlobalFoundries in Singapore. Alex is currently serving as the VP in Technology Development at CXMT in Hefei, overseeing technology pathfinding activities for the company and managing joint research programs with universities and research institutes. Alongside his industry career, Alex has been deeply involved in academia, holding the position of Adjunct Associate Professor in the Physics Departments of both NTU and NUS in Singapore, underscoring his commitment to education and research. His academic background includes a PhD in Experimental Condensed Matter Physics from Rutgers University and post-doc work at Lehigh University. Alex has made significant contributions to the field of semiconductor device fabrication through his extensive publication record, which includes over 85 journal papers and 30 conference papers. Moreover, his inventive spirit is apparent through his impressive patent portfolio, boasting over 100 US patents, with many in the pipeline.