93393 - ELECTRONIC FRONTIERS M

Conoscenze e abilità da conseguire

The course will address challenges in emerging technologies and architectures for intelligent systems, big data and internet of things, possibly changing year to year.

Contenuti

Prerequisites

The course prerequisites include basic knowledge of semiconductor theory and the MOS transistor operation, as well as fundamentals of digital and analog design. Basic knowledge of quantum mechanics is a plus, but not required. A refresh on the most important concept will be provided on dedicated lessons and during the course when needed. More possibilities to refresh the material is provided on the Readings/Bibliography section. Successful completion of courses like the one listed below is highly recommended:

• 93390 - Digital Systems and Introduction to Computer Architectures
• 93391 - SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICES AND QUANTUM-COMPUTING

Course context

For almost 6 decades the Moore’s Law, which predicts that number of components in an integrated circuit doubles every 12-18 months, has been driving force of the semiconductor industry. For a great part of this time, i.e., until the MOS transistor gate reached the 1/10^th of micrometer, the secret sauce of this law relied on Dennard’s Scaling, which lay down rules to decrease the size of the components while increasing the operating clock frequency and reducing the power consumption.

Once the submicron dimension was reached, the insurgence of secondary effects due to the short size of the device channel and quantum effects due to the shrink of layers down to the atom size started to impose more and more restrictions to the scaling rules. Consequently, the Moore’s Law started to show some signs that it was reaching some sort of saturation, and its end might be near. Moreover, increasing power density issues, due to the increase of parasitics and leakage current, made it even harder to integrate more components on the same die. On top of that, energy sustainability and need for longer battery life, posed even stronger power consumption constraints.

Nevertheless, over the last decade or so, many new techniques to keep the Moore’s Law alive have been discovered, and still being proposed, also thanks to a better understanding of the underlying physics of the operation of this very small devices. But, the complexity of the employed techniques resulted in both a progressive increase of the R&D and production costs, to the point that only that only few companies worldwide can afford to work at the leading edge of the semiconductor industry.

Course objective

The objective of this course is to provide a fundamental understanding of the various physical, technological, and financial aspects that have been employed to keep the Moore’s Law alive. Starting from a circuit designer’s perspective, the various device parameters that influence the circuits performance will be analyzed, with a particular attention on power consumption. A physical understanding of these phenomena will be provided, including elements of quantum mechanics, but trying to keep it as practical as possible. Economic and financial aspects will also be taken into consideration as they are integral part of the technology evolution. In this context, techniques on how, to estimate and manage the design and production cost of integrated circuits will be provided. The course will also include seminars from semiconductor industry leaders.

Outline

• Semiconductor ecosystem and semiconductor market
• Transistor scaling: Moore’s Law, Dennard’s Scaling, and beyond
• MOS transistor – Fundamentals, Electrostatics and Transport (review)
• Digital design metrics
  
• Leakage current
• Mobility enhancement
• Ultra-Thin Body devices: FD-SOI, FinFET, and more advanced devices
• Economical and financial aspect of the semiconductors industry and IC design
• Learning from others and chip cost analysis
  
• Seminars from industry leaders

Seminars

• From IC Designer to CEO: Engineering Excellence, Leadership and Product Strategy – by G. T. Tuttle, Former Silicon Labs’ CEO
• Design Methodologies for Cloud Server’s SoCs – by T. Volpe, Former architect/designer of Amazon's Inferentia & Trainium ASICs
  

Testi/Bibliografia

The course will be based on lecture notes and articles that will be made available online for the students. Much of the presented material is inspired or adapted from various sources, including several textbooks, conference tutorials, tutorial papers (articles) and other excellent resources available on the web. Bibliography of tutorial papers and conference tutorials will be provided during the course and reading material will be made available if allowed and when possible. Below is a list of optional textbooks.

Semiconductors devices

• R. F. Pierret, Advanced Semiconductors Fundamentals. Second Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall - Pearson, 2002. – It is a concise excellent book to keep in the library. It is part of a series called Modular Series on Solid State Devices. The whole series is highly recommended to everyone working in the semiconductor field.
• C. Hu, Modern Semiconductor Devices for Integrated Circuits, Pearson 2009. – Also a great well-written book. The PDF is available free of charge and downloadable from the author’s website.
• M. Lundstrom, Fundamentals of Nanotransistors. Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific Publishing Co., 2017. – It is also a very nice concise book, specifically on modern MOS devices. Most of the material is available free of charge on his online classes.
• Y. Taur and T. H. Ning, Fundamentals of Modern VLSI Devices, Third Edition. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press, 2022. – Probably the most omni comprehensive book on modern semiconductor devices. It is very well written and usable as a reference book, so it is highly recommended to everyone working in the semiconductor field.
  

Digital design

• J. Rabaey, A. Chandrakasan and B. Nikolic, Digital Integrated Circuits – A Design Perspective, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall - Pearson, 2002. – A fundamental text on digital design with a particular emphasis on physical implementation.
• N. H. E. Weste, D. M. Harris, CMOS VLSI Design A Circuits and Systems Perspective, Fourth Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson, 2011.
• K. Roy & S. C. Prasad, Low-Power CMOS VLSI Circuit Design, 2000. – A little bit outdated, but still a great book on low-power digital design including a good description of current leakage.

Quantum mechanics

• A. C. Phillips, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics. Chichester, WS (England): Wiley, 2003. – Concise, well written and of easy access.
  

Semiconductor ecosystem

• W. Rhines, Predicting Semiconductors Business Trends: After Moore’s Law. Independently published, 2020. Free ebook version available on SemiWiki.

Metodi didattici

In-person lectures, taught in English. The style of the lecture will be as much as possible through explanation in graphical form to build a strong intuition on the concepts. Most of the results will be given as-is and no mathematical derivation will be generally provided, but it can be found in most of the various cited references. A PDF version of the lesson slides will be progressively made available online as required. Additionally, clarifications, discussions, or any other help can be requested via email. Online meeting vis MS Teams or Google Meet can be also held upon request.

Modalità di verifica e valutazione dell'apprendimento

Emphasis will be place on the student ability to contextualize and argue on the topics of the program. Fundamental understanding of the material will take priority over mathematical calculations. The examination will be held in English and usage of appropriate terminology by the student will be assessed.

Strumenti a supporto della didattica

• In-person lectures in English language
• PDF slides of the presented material (available online)
• Readings assignments of various articles (available online)
• Homework to help the students assess their understanding of the material
• Optional reading: various textbooks
• Other resources freely available on the web
• Clarifications and discussion via email (upon request)
• Live online meeting vis MS Teams or Google Meet (upon request)

Orario di ricevimento

Consulta il sito web di Alessandro Piovaccari