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Spring 2017: Upcoming Seminars






Dr. Oleg Mukhanov
Hypres
Date:
Friday, Jan. 27th, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Location:
Kent 413
Superconducting Single Flux Quantum Electronics: Solving Energy Problem in High-End Computing

Abstract:
The explosive growth of the Internet transformed data centers into large industrial scale computer facilities with extraordinarily high energy demands. From Google and Facebook to banking, cloud computing and supercomputing, an average data center already use as much electricity as a medium-size town. Besides just high energy costs, there is a compelling technical reason to improve energy efficiency of computing technologies. The development of the next generations of high-end computers will not be possible unless a significant improvement in energy efficiency is achieved over the technology available today. The heart of the problem is in a relatively low energy-efficiency of current computer circuit technologies consuming too much energy for computing, storing and moving data between processors and memories. Superconducting Single Flux Quantum (SFQ) technology is viewed as a possible Beyond-Silicon technology at a relatively matured stage of the development. I will review several key innovations happened just within last few years which dramatically increased a potential of superconductivity addressing known critical problems which prevented the use of superconductivity in high-end computing in the past. Superconducting SFQ digital circuits by virtue of their inherent low power dissipation, high speed, lossless interconnect present an excellent opportunity to dramatically increase energy efficiency of high-end computing. The long-standing memory problem is being addressed by a new class of cryogenic spintronics devices capable of co-integration with SFQ circuits and new superconducting spintronics elements, in which competing superconducting and magnetic order parameters co-exist to deliver new opportunities for electronics.

Biography:
Dr. Oleg Mukhanov, Chief Technology Officer and Sr. EVP at Hypres, Inc. He received the Ph.D. in physics (1987) from Moscow State University and the M.S. in electrical engineering (1983) from Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (with honors). Dr. Mukhanov has more than 30 years of experience in superconducting electronics. He joined Hypres in 1991 to initiate the development of Rapid Single Flux Quantum (RSFQ) superconductor circuit technology, which he co-invented in 1985. Prior to Hypres he was a staff scientist in Moscow State University developing the RSFQ technology basis. Over the years at Hypres, Dr. Mukhanov has initiated and led many projects on high-performance superconductor digital, mixed signal, and analog circuits. These include circuits and devices for data processors and memory, radio frequency signal reception, signal and time digital processing, cryogenic interfaces for a variety of applications including wireless communications, radar, electronic warfare, instrumentation, and high-end computing. He was a designer of a number of the world’s fastest digital circuits. He co-invented Digital-RF architecture and led the development of the world’s first cryocooled Digital-RF receiver system. He also co-invented and led the development of new generation of energy-efficient single flux quantum technology and superconducting ferromagnetic random access memories for energy efficient computing systems. Dr. Mukhanov authored and co-authored over 160 scientific papers, book chapters and over 20 patents. He is a member of advisory committees of international conferences and institutions on superconducting electronics, was chair and member of organizing and program committees of many national and international superconductor electronics conferences. In 2005-2007, Dr. Mukhanov was a president of the US Committee on Superconducting Electronics. He is an editor of IEEE Transactions of Applied Superconductivity and received an IEEE outstanding service recognition as an editor of special issues of this journal. Dr. Mukhanov is a Fellow of IEEE and member of American Physical Society. He is the recipient of The IEEE Award for Continuing and Significant Contributions in the Field of Small Scale Applied Superconductivity (2015).


Prof. Aatmesh Shrivastava
Northestern University
Date:
Thursday, Mar. 9th, 10:00am-11:00am
Location:
CEPSR 414
Enabling Self-powered IoT Devices Using Ultra-low Power Circuits and Systems

Abstract:
Wearable electronics, intelligent devices, medical electronics, and more recently Internet of Things (IoTs) are dramatically changing the way we experience life by providing rich information about our activities, health, and the environment. To be truly ubiquitous, these devices must be energy autonomous. Such a system must harvest energy from ambient sources like light, vibration, temperature differentials, etc. and must also be very efficient in using the little energy available to it for computation. This talk focuses on how to enable perpetual, self-sustaining ultra-low power systems. We will discuss circuits that can harvest energy efficiently from the smallest ambient sources, and ultra-low power analog and mixed signal circuits such as voltage references, clock generators and regulators. We will also talk about the need for an ultra-low power system architecture where energy takes the center stage in defining the architecture and not performance as in traditional systems. Finally, we will discuss the use of ultra-low power systems for the development of bio-electronics and neurological systems, and power-electronics with an emphasis on the use of renewable energy.

Biography:
Aatmesh Shrivastava received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Virginia in 2014. Prior to his Ph.D., he worked as a senior design engineer at Texas Instruments, Bangalore from 2006 to 2010. From 2014 to 2016 he worked at an IoT start-up PsiKick, where he headed the research and development of the energy harvesting and power management solutions. He is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Electrical Engineering department at Northeastern University, Boston where he is leading the Energy Circuit Group. He has more than 20 patents and has published more than 25 peer reviewed papers in top IEEE conferences and journals. His research interests include self-powered and ultra-low power circuits and system, energy-harvesting and power-first system/computer architecture, internet-of-things, ultra-low power bio-medical and neural Circuits, exascale computing, and high reliability system design.


Dr. Gianluigi De Geronimo
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Date:
Friday, Mar. 10th, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Location:
Kent 413
Microelectronics for Radiation Detectors

Abstract:
Radiation detectors find application in several areas, the most prominent being medical imaging, national security, safeguard, and physics research. In order to achieve a high resolution, these detectors require specialized low-noise electronics, also known as front-end electronics. This seminar presents the most relevant technical and non-technical aspects of front-end electronics design for radiation detectors. The concepts of low-noise charge amplification, pulse shaping and equivalent noise charge are introduced.
Front-end application-specific integrated circuits are regarded as a critical enabling technology without which both present and future radiation detector developments would be impossible. The deep knowledge of this specialized front-end design has traditionally belonged to a very limited number of research groups and institutions worldwide. A major challenge comes from the dramatic increase in demand, combined with the need for higher resolving capability, functionality and portability. These stringent requirements push the state-of-the-art to the limit and calls for continuous innovation. The rapid evolution of front-end ASICs is discussed and state-of-the-art developments are shown.

Biography:
Gianluigi De Geronimo received his Ph.D. in microelectronics from Milan Polytechnic in 1997. Shortly after that he joined the Instrumentation Division of Brookhaven National Laboratory, NY, where he specialized in the design of front-end integrated circuits for radiation detectors. He successfully developed several state-of-the-art ASICs implementing innovative circuits and frequently achieving record performance. He collaborates with several institutions and industries and is co-author of over 130 scientific publications and two book chapters.
Dr. De Geronimo is a Visiting Research Scientist with the Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences Department at the University of Michigan and an Adjunct Professor with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the Stony Brook University where he teaches a course on microelectronics for sensors, and mentors of several MS and Ph.D. students. Recipient of the 2008 BNL Science and Technology Award, 2012 CSIRO Award, 2012 Battelle Inventor of the Year Award, and 2009, 2011, and 2014 R&D 100 Awards, he holds 20 patents and records of invention. He is editor of IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science and reviewer for various journals and government institutions.


Prof. Sudhakar Pamarti
UCLA
Date:
Friday, Mar. 24th, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Location:
MUDD 825
Time Varying Circuits for Radio Receiver Applications

Abstract:
Sharp, programmable, linear, integrated filters are enabling components for software defined and cognitive radio applications. However, they are difficult to realize: SAW and MEMS based filters are sharp and linear but not very programmable; active filters can be sharp and programmable but are not very linear; sampled charge domain filtering is sharp and programmable but the burden of the linearity is on the front end voltage-current converter. This talk descirbes an alternative approach that uses time-varying (as opposed to time-invariant) circuits to realize sharp, programmable, linear, integrated filters. The technique exploits sampling aliases to effectively realize very sharp, linear filtering prior to sampling. This talk will describe the basics of this time-varying circuit design approach and illustrates its application to radio front-ends and spectrum scanners. Measurement results from recent prototype integrated circuits will also be presented.

Biography:
Dr. Sudhakar Pamarti is an associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received the Bachelor of Technology degree in electronics and electrical communication engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 1995, and the M.S. and the Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of California, San Diego in 1999 and 2003, respectively. Prior to joining UCLA, he has worked at Rambus Inc. (‘03-`05) and Hughes Software Systems (‘95-`97). Dr. Pamarti is a recipient of the National Science Foundation’s CAREER award for developing digital signal conditioning techniques to improve analog, mixed-signal, and radio frequency integrated circuits. Dr. Pamarti currently serves as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers and as a member of the CICC Technical Program Committee.


Prof. Dimitrios Sounas
UT Austin
Date:
Friday, Mar. 31st, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Location:
CEPSR 414
Active Electromagnetics for Modern Communication Systems

Abstract:
Modern communication systems are characterized by increasing demands in terms of various metrics, including low loss, power efficiency, compact size and integrability. Many of these requirements can hardly be achieved through conventional technology and require the development of new techniques. In this talk, I will show how it is possible to address these problems and design electromagnetic devices with unprecedented characteristics by using time modulation, nonlinear effects and gain. I will begin my talk by discussing how time modulation can be used to achieve magnetless nonreciprocity in various frequency ranges, with applications in the design of circulators for full-duplex communication systems, isolators for protection of sources, nonreciprocal metasurfaces for advanced wave manipulation, and topological insulators that are immune to disorder. Next, I will show how by combining electromagnetic resonances with nonlinear effects, it is possible to design interesting optical functionalities, such as isolators without any form of biasing, and power limiters. I will also present the unique characteristics of structures with balanced gain and loss, focusing on the unprecedented functionalities that such structures can provide, including broadband cloaking and negative refraction without using resonant metamaterials. I will show how all these concepts are aligned with the recent advances in the fabrication of efficient nanodevices at microwave, THz and optical frequencies, and provide a general vision for a new generation of electromagnetic devices.

Biography:
Dimitrios L. Sounas received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering with the highest honors from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, in 2009. Between 2010 and 2015, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow, first at Polytechnique Montreal and later in The University of Texas at Austin. Since 2015, he has been a Research Scientist in The University of Texas at Austin. His research interests span over a broad range of areas, including electromagnetics, plasmonics, optics and acoustics, with a particular emphasis on the design of nonreciprocal, nonlinear and active devices. He has been the author or the co-author of 48 journal papers, 90 conference papers, 2 book chapters and 4 patents, among which papers in highly selective journals, including Science, Nature Physics, Nature Communications, Physical Review Letters, and IEEE Transactions. He has made major contributions in the area of magnetless nonreciprocal components, which have attracted significant interest from the industry and the military for inclusion in the next-generation wireless communication systems. His work has been covered by the general media and resulted in the foundation of a startup company in Austin, specializing in the design of angular-momentum circulators for RF and acoustical systems.


Prof. Jeyanandh Paramesh
CMU
Date:
Friday, Apr. 7th, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Location:
MUDD 825
Ultra-wideband Millimeter-wave Integrated Circuits for 5G Communications and Beyond

Abstract:
The demand for wireless capacity and data rates continues to grow unabated. In order to meet this demand, future communication systems will incorporate a mix of new techniques at all layers of the network. At the physical layer, these include reconfigurable spectrum sharing radios in the low GHz bands, and (sub)mm-wave radios. In both types of systems, the need to support very wide bandwidths and massively large numbers of antennas in an energy efficient manner is of paramount importance. In this talk, I will describe our recent research aimed at addressing these challenges. In particular, we will describe design techniques for energy efficient beamformers, digital frequency synthesizers and mixed-signal interfaces for such systems. I will also briefly describe recent developments in CMU’s long standing research on the reconfiguration of RF integrated circuits using phase-change switches, which we envision as a “more-than-Moore” element that can augment the capabilities of standard CMOS technologies.

Biography:
Jeyanandh Paramesh received the B.Tech, degree from IIT, Madras, the M.S degree from Oregon State University and the Ph.D degrees from the University of Washington, Seattle, all in Electrical Engineering. He is currently Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He has held product development positions with Analog Devices, where he designed high-performance data converters, and Motorola where he designed analog and RF integrated circuits for cellular transceivers. From 2002 to 2004, he was with the Communications Circuit Lab, Intel where he developed multi-antenna receivers, high-efficiency power amplifiers and high-speed data converters high data-rate wireless transceivers. His research broadly addresses design and technological challenges related to RF and mixed-signal integrated circuits and systems for emerging applications.


Dr. Rajiv Joshi
IBM
Date:
Friday, Apr. 21st, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Location:
MUDD 825
From Low power to Predictive Analytics for VLSI - Beyond Guessing

Abstract:
Moore’s law drives lowering cost/function ratio and thus pushes addition of more functions on a chip. This requires reduction in power. In Internet of Everything (IoE), System on Chip (SOC), flexible electronics, 3D printing the drive towards low power while maintaining functionality will be essential. Also power has become the key driving force in high performance processor designs as the frequency scale-up is reaching saturation. In order to achieve low power system, circuit and technology co-design is essential. This talk focuses on pros and cons analysis of technology and circuit techniques from power perspective and various techniques to exploit lower power. The talk highlights fundamentals and the direction for low power optimization such as reduction in active, leakage, short circuit power and collision power will continue to be the focal area for in the scaled world. Conventional and advanced techniques (e.g. clock gating, power gating, longer channel, multi-Vt design, stacking, header-footer device techniques and new developments etc.) will be described for logic and memories. Finally key challenges in achieving low power will be described.
As the technology pushes towards sub-14nm era, process variability and geometric variation in devices can cause variation in power, performance and functionality. Predictive Analytics to capture systematic and random variation and to aid in robust design optimization in nm regime will be discussed. Also the talk will describe future growth directions and role of such predictive algorithms.

Biography:
Dr. Rajiv V. Joshi is a research staff member at T. J. Watson research center, IBM. He received his B.Tech I.I.T (Bombay, India), M.S (M.I.T) and Dr. Eng. Sc. (Columbia University). His novel interconnects processes and structures for aluminum, tungsten and copper technologies which are widely used in IBM for various technologies from sub-0.5µm to 14nm. He has led successfully predictive failure analytic techniques for yield prediction and also the technology-driven SRAM at IBM Server Group. He commercialized these techniques. He received 3 Outstanding Technical Achievement (OTAs), 3 highest Corporate Patent Portfolio awards for licensing contributions, holds 58 invention plateaus and has over 225 US patents and over 350 including international patents. He has authored and co-authored over 185 papers. He received the Best Editor Award from IEEE TVLSI journal. He is recipient of 2015 BMM award. He is inducted into New Jersey Inventor Hall of Fame in Aug 2014 along with pioneer Nikola Tesla. He is a recipient of 2013 IEEE CAS Industrial Pioneer award and 2013 Mehboob Khan Award from Semiconductor Research Corporation. He is a member of IBM Academy of technology. He served as a Distinguished Lecturer for IEEE CAS and EDS society. He is IEEE, ISQED and World Technology Network fellow and distinguished alumnus of IIT Bombay. He is in the Board of Governors for IEEE CAS. He serves as an Associate Editor of TVLSI. He served on committees of ISLPED (Int. Symposium Low Power Electronic Design), IEEE VLSI design, IEEE CICC, IEEE Int. SOI conference, ISQED and Advanced Metallization Program committees. He served as a general chair for IEEE ISLPED. He is an industry liaison for universities as a part of the Semiconductor Research Corporation. Also he is in the industry liaison committee for IEEE CAS society.


Spring 2017 Seminars

  • Title: Superconducting Single Flux Quantum Electronics: Solving Energy Problem in High-End Computing
          Speaker: Dr. Oleg Mukhanov
  •       Date: Friday, Jan. 27th, 2pm, Kent 413

  • Title: Enabling Self-powered IoT Devices Using Ultra-low Power Circuits and Systems
          Speaker: Prof. Aatmesh Shrivastava
  •       Date: Thursday, Mar. 9th, 10am, CEPSR 414

  • Title: Microelectronics for Radiation Detectors
          Speaker: Dr. Gianluigi De Geronimo
  •       Date: Friday, Mar. 10th, 2pm, Kent 413

  • Title: Time Varying Circuits for Radio Receiver Applications
          Speaker: Prof. Sudhakar Pamarti
  •       Date: Friday, Mar. 24th, 2pm, MUDD 825

  • Title: Active Electromagnetics for Modern Communication Systems
          Speaker: Prof. Dimitrios Sounas
  •       Date: Friday, Mar. 31st, 2pm, CEPSR 414

  • Title: Ultra-wideband Millimeter-wave Integrated Circuits for 5G Communications and Beyond
          Speaker: Prof. Jeyanandh Paramesh
  •       Date: Friday, Apr. 7th, 2pm, MUDD 825

  • Title: From Low power to Predictive Analytics for VLSI - Beyond Guessing
          Speaker: Dr. Rajiv Joshi
  •       Date: Friday, Apr. 21st, 2pm, MUDD 825

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