Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2022-2023)

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.