Analog Circuit
Design:
Amplifiers, voltage references, opamps, sample-and-hold circuits, continuous and discrete-time
filters, oversampled and Nyquist-rate data converters, non-linear analog circuits, power supply
management ICs, mixed analog/digital IC applications. Analog Circuits for sensor interfaces.
Custom Applications and Power
Management:
Analog and digital circuit design emphasizing energy scavenging and power harvesting
techniques, solar power, wireless power transmission, RF MEMS, biomedical sensors, micro
and anaofluidics chips, & high temperature circuits. Innovative circuits for automotive,
biomedical, robotics, and specialized custom and industrial products. Advanced sensor circuits,
regulators, IOs, and DC-DC Converters.
Digital Circuits and SoC/ASIC/SiP
Designs and Methodology:
Solutions to today's complex digital and mixed-signal design problems, in particular practical examples
and case studies involved with systems level design using SoC/ASICs/SiPs ("how we did it"). Multiple
power domains with multi-threshold and power shutoff, managing multiple clock to clock domains,
managing noise or bridging the digital to analog chasm. Hardware-software tradeoffs, co-design and
co-verification, signal integrity challenges and optimizations of all the above including
Design-for-Manufacturability.
Simulation and Modeling:
Compact active and passive device models, behavioral modeling, and signal integrity modeling
and simulation. System, circuit, functional, timing and logic modeling and simulation.
Parasitic extraction and reduction; simulation techniques for analog, RF, and mixed-signal
circuits. Package modeling, process variation and statistical modeling.
Embedded Memory:
Memory circuits, architectures, and methodologies addressing scalability, GHz performance,
manufacturability, reliability, and the advancement of emerging memory technologies.
Also of interest are redundancy, BIST, SER, cell stability, and low voltage/leakage design.
Signal and Data Processing:
General purpose, application specific and configurable data processing architectures, circuits
and systems. Digital signal processing for communications and data storage; image processing;
speech recognition; multimedia and graphics; encryption and error correction. Special purpose
architectures and circuits for novel data processing applications. Digital implementation of
previously analog functions.
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Sensors, MEMS, and Emerging Technologies:
New and evolving technologies, materials, methodologies, and applications for chip design
and development. Examples include nanotechnology, molecular computing, bioelectronic devices, biosensors,
CMOS image sensors, OLED's organic and plastic semicondcutors, DNA micro arrays, ultra high speed devices and MEMS,
body area netwroks, self assembly technologies, carbon nanotubes, and plastic circuitry and displays.
Manufacturing and Test:
Advanced manufacturing techniques using any combination of bulk/SOI CMOS, bipolar, non-silicon, and optoelectronics technologies.
Special focus on challenges of and alternatives to CMOS scaling. Evolving chip packaging such as chip stacking, lead-free, flip-chip, and
System-in-Package. Design for manufacturability/test/reliability, built-in self-test for IC and system, low-cost techniques, design for at-speed
test, RF characterization and production test, jitter and high-speed SerDes standards, IEEE 1149.6 boundary scan, hardware and
firmware silicon debug and diagnosis, new reliability and failure mechanisms in nanometer technologies, ESD protection, latch-up
and soft errors. Tutorial papers on the design impact of process-technology selection or packaging and high-speed serial I/O testing
are encouraged.
Wired Communications:
Circuits and systems for electrical and optical networks, including; peripheral IO buses, LAN, WAN, Ethernet, SONET, xDSL, SATA, HDMI,
PCIe, USB, cable modems, power-line/phone-line home networks, serial links, backplane, high-speed memory and graphic interfaces,
chip-to-chip interconnects, on-chip clocking and high-speed low-power blocks for broadband applications. Circuit blocks including
Serializers/Deserializers, Equalizers, PLLs, DLLs, CDRs, Drivers and Amplifiers.
Wireless Designs:
Integrated wireless transceiver architectures and sub-circuits for cellular, connectivity, broadband and millimeter-wave communication,
low-power and biomedical, smart antennas and MIMO, software-defined radio. Papers on RF circuit solutions targeting emerging wireless
applications and techniques are particularly encouraged.
Programmable Devices:
Logic block, routing fabric, system architecture, and circuit design for FPGAs, PLDs, and structured arrays. Programmable I/O structures,
configurable cores, interaction between configurable logic and processors/memories/fixed-function cores. Programmable analog
architectures. CAD tools targeting these devices. Power efficient architecture, power modeling and optimization for programmable
devices. Architecture and CAD for nano-scale FPGAs.
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