Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The rapid evolution of the global electronic industry is unceasingly introducing new products operating at ever higher frequencies and bitrates. At such high data rates, high-frequency effects become the dominant factor limiting the overall performance of microelectronic systems. In addition, the fast rising demand for multifunction and miniature products warrants integration of heterogeneous circuit modules. As a result, the traditional boundaries between different design domains are fast vanishing. Moreover, variability of the geometrical and physical parameters and its effect on the system performance is adding another major concern. This uncertainty becomes inevitable at all levels of the design hierarchy. For example, manufacturing uncertainties can significantly influence the performance of on-chip interconnects, leading to timing variations that can propagate to the circuit or board level with negative impact on the whole system performance and yield. The research proposal calls for a paradigm shift in the development of the underlying design algorithms and methodologies by promoting “Design for Uncertainties” as a major ingredient in the design process. As a step towards this goal, several of the planned research activities are focused on the development of specialized stochastic algorithms to model and simulate the underlying statistical information at different levels of the design hierarchy. In addition, systematic methods will be developed to incorporate these algorithms in the design cycle to achieve optimal design centering. The planned research addresses generic strategic issues common to high-speed applications and will advance the state-of-art in a broad spectrum of interrelated topics. The success of the proposed research will provide designers with the ability to efficiently plan and design large-scale systems that are not currently feasible; resulting in superior and more reliable multi-function electronic and communication products. In addition, the benefits of the proposed research are not limited to the design of high-speed electronic systems since large-scale and uncertainty quantification challenges are common issues in several other fields within engineering and science.