In what new technical directions should we be heading

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Long-Range PlanningTechnology Scanning
Gary Baldwin, Hugo De Man, Mark Horowitz Akira
Kanuma, Toshiaki Masuhara

• In what new technical directions should we be
  heading?
• What might we have missed?
• How should we incorporate any findings into SSCS?
• Affiliations / meetings / publications /
  educational thrusts, based on new technical
  directions?

2

• Extend the successful SSCS model of combining
  innovative research with practical issues,
  leading to commercially interesting
  technologies.
• Working with proven technologies may miss new
  opportunities.
• SSCS abilities in commercially viable research
  may lend help to those working on new
  technologies that now only have a hint of
  commercial viability.
• Hence, scan to identify some of these new
  technologies and stimulate the SSCS community
  to work on them.

3
Link to ISSCC Technology Directions Committee

• Topics submitted for consideration
  (confidential)
• Quantum / nanoelectronic circuit design
• Gate / circuit design with new materials (e.g.,
  FE)
• MEMs in and impact upon circuits
• Organic (plastic) devices in circuits
• On-chip communications
• Embedded System design

4

• Organics
• Bio
• Photonics, from components integration
  perspective
• Re-configurable circuits (from Xilinx block to
  full systems)
• Think beyond silicon but build on fabrication
  methodology for other devices/circuits
• Interconnect technologies
• Sensors (sponsor Sensors Council?)

Your comments?

• Request your inputs (your best one (1)) before
  next AdComm meeting (August)
  garyb_at_eecs.berkeley.edu

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Scorecard Adcomm.
Long-range Planning Comm.
0
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Initially, specific suggestions of new areas to
explore

• Organic semiconductors, especially large-area,
  extremely low-cost, flexible substrates
• Bio-chips, mixing new system design approaches
  with traditional silicon fabrication
  modalities, or new ones (inkjet)
• Soft errors in ICs a workshop to educate
  designers
• Novel embedded systems design, not covered by
  existing conferences (design, test, long lead
  times, heterogeneity)
• Impact of new materials on design, especially on
  logic memory (FeRAM, MRAM, etc.)

7
A more generic, potentially more profound
approach (inspired by de Man)

• As technologies evolve (e.g., continuously
  doubling transistor count or clock speed) and
  incorporate new devices and materials (bio,
  nano, organo, etc.), most likely the real
  progress will result from merging presently
  unconnected domains and techno-cultures to
  create, for example, the ultra-low power, low
  cost, always-connected devices operating on
  novel energy sources and other, presently
  unforseen applications.

8
The biggest challenge will be to bring visionary
people together that are willing to start a
dialogue on what these future micro-systems will
look like and how we will join forces to make
progress in this new field of super-circuit
design.

• Bio-electronics, health care and comfort
  electronics
• Nano-electronics (both top-down CMOS and
  bottom-up micro- electronics)
• Technology around CMOS (MEMS, NEMS, Plastic,
  Packaging (interconnect, 3D silicon))
• Configurable architectures and intelligent
  networks on a chip
• Marriage between Opto and electronics
• Networking and 4G wireless
• Advanced (embedded) programming and human
  interfacing
• Applications in transportation, education,
  security, environmental monitoring and control

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Therefore,

• As an IEEE Society, we must create mechanisms
  for dialogue to bring
• design-oriented people together, join in acts
  of creativity and thinking on how to
  facilitate design methodology simultaneously
  across the boundaries of technologies and
  applications, respectively.

• There are many models for doing this (Gordon
  conferences, Aspen meeting, Intl. Workshop on
  Future Info. Processing Tech., etc.).

• SSCS should take the lead in this endeavour from
  its historical role in the rapid, pervasive
  commercialization of new technology.

• It could fundamentally change the Society and
  its impact on society.

• Where do we start? What do we do next? Is this
  being handled adequately elsewhere within SSCS
  or its affiliates? Thats part of the
  continuing dialogue of this committee.