Integrated Systems in the More-than-Moore Era: Designing Low-Cost Energy-Efficient Systems Using Heterogeneous Components

Abstract

Semiconductor technology over the past four decades. However, when CMOS transistor feature size and interconnect dimensions approach their fundamental limits, aggressive scaling will no longer play a significant role in performance improvement. How should the semiconductor industry provide new value in each driven scaling has traditionally focused on improving computation performance (through faster clock frequencies and recently, more parallelism) and memory capacity, electronic systems of the future will provide value by being multi-functional. We envision that integrated systems of the future will perform diverse functions (in addition to high-performance computation, high-density storage and high-bandwidth communication) such as high-accuracy sensing of real-time signals, energy harvesting, and on-chip chemical/biological testing, to name a few. Enabling such diverse functionality with high performance, high reliability and a low energy budget in a single system requires a radical shift in the principles of system design and integration. Instead of focusing on improving the performance of traditional digital CMOS circuits or exploring nanotechnologies for Silicon and design and integration of multiple device technologies and diverse components in a single heterogeneous system that is high-performance, energy-efficient and reliable. We will outline our vision in this direction, and support it with illustrative design scenarios where heterogeneous components are used to monitor the health of an electronic system, enable more effective power management, and communicate wirelessly on-chip.