EECS Department Colloquium Series

Transforming Nanodevices into Nanosystems: The N3XT 1,000X Maria Klawe video

Wednesday, January 27, 2016
306 Soda Hall (HP Auditorium)
4:00 - 5:00 pm

Subhasish Mitra
Professor, EECS Stanford

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ABSTRACT:
The computing demands of future abundant-data applications far exceed the capabilities of today’s electronics, and cannot be met by isolated improvements in transistor technologies, memories, or integrated circuit (IC) architectures alone. Transformative nanosystems, which leverage the unique properties of emerging nanotechnologies to create new IC architectures, are required to deliver unprecedented performance and energy efficiency. However, emerging nanomaterials and nanodevices face major obstacles such as inherent imperfections and variations. Thus, realizing working circuits, let alone transformative nanosystems, has been infeasible.

The N3XT (Nano-Engineered Computing Systems Technology) approach overcomes these challenges through recent advances across the computing stack: (a) transistors using nanomaterials such as one-dimensional carbon nanotubes (and two-dimensional semiconductors) for high performance and energy efficiency, (b) high-density non-volatile resistive and magnetic memories, (c) Ultra-dense (e.g., monolithic) three-dimensional integration of logic and memory for fine-grained connectivity, (d) new architectures for computation immersed in memory, and (e) new materials technologies and their integration for efficient heat removal.

N3XT hardware prototypes represent leading examples of transforming scientifically-interesting nanomaterials and nanodevices into actual nanosystems. Compared to conventional approaches, N3XT architectures promise to improve the energy efficiency of abundant-data applications significantly, in the range of three orders of magnitude, thereby enabling new frontiers of applications for both mobile devices and the cloud.

BIOGRAPHY:
Professor Subhasish Mitra directs the Robust Systems Group in the Department of Electrical Engineering and the Department of Computer Science of Stanford University, where he is the Chambers Faculty Scholar of Engineering. Before joining Stanford, he was a Principal Engineer at Intel.

Prof. Mitra's research interests include robust systems, VLSI design, CAD, validation and test, emerging nanotechnologies, and emerging neuroscience applications.  His X-Compact technique for test compression has been key to cost-effective manufacturing and high-quality testing of a vast majority of electronic systems, including numerous Intel products. X-Compact and its derivatives have been implemented in widely-used commercial Electronic Design Automation tools. He, jointly with his students and collaborators, demonstrated the first carbon nanotube computer, and it was featured on the cover of NATURE. The US NSF presented this work as a Research Highlight to the US Congress, and it also was highlighted as "an important, scientific breakthrough" by the BBC, Economist, EE Times, IEEE Spectrum, MIT Technology Review, National Public Radio, New York Times, Scientific American, Time, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and numerous other organizations worldwide.

Prof. Mitra's honors include the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the White House, the highest US honor for early-career outstanding scientists and engineers, the ACM SIGDA/IEEE CEDA A. Richard Newton Technical Impact Award in Electronic Design Automation, "a test of time honor" for an outstanding technical contribution, the Semiconductor Research Corporation's Technical Excellence Award, and the Intel Achievement Award, Intel’s highest corporate honor.  He and his students published several award-winning papers at major venues: IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference, IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference, IEEE International Test Conference, IEEE Transactions on CAD, IEEE VLSI Test Symposium, Intel Design and Test Technology Conference, and the Symposium on VLSI Technology. At Stanford, he has been honored several times by graduating seniors "for being important to them during their time at Stanford."

Prof. Mitra has served on numerous conference committees and journal editorial boards. He served on DARPA's Information Science and Technology Board as an invited member. He is a Fellow of the ACM and the IEEE.

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