Collaborative Research: From High-level Synthesis to Layout: a Cross-layer Methodology for Large-scale Reliable IC Design

设计具有高设计效率的大型片上系统（soc）是一个非常有趣的挑战。然而，由于不同设计层之间缺乏协调，导致设计师在单个设计层做出最坏情况的假设，从而导致可靠性/能量/性能协同优化或权衡较差的次优设计。该项目是第一个致力于从高级综合到紧密集成的物理设计的统一抗故障系统的主要努力。它将建立以可靠性为中心的物理感知高级综合和高级引导物理设计，以弥合这两个遥远层之间的差距。本文还将开发一种新的跨层工程变更顺序（ECO）框架，将高层ECO与稳定的物理层ECO耦合起来。新的工具和方法将被研究并提供给系统和物理设计界，目标是提高可靠性，同时提高整体设计的生产力和质量。电子产品已经渗透到现代社会，现代社会越来越依赖于这些电子系统的可靠运行。然而，设备级扩展正朝着与系统可靠性相反的方向发展。该项目将通过跨层集成改变现有的SOC设计方法。这项工作的研究成果将通过出版物和报告、与工业合作者的积极互动以及向教室和教学实验室注入新的课程材料等方式广泛传播。主要研究人员将继续努力招募女性和其他未被充分代表的少数民族加入他们的研究项目。他们之前接触过K-12学生，并将继续这样做，以吸引他们中最优秀的人进入工程专业。

Designing robust and energy-efficient large-scale systems-on-chips (SOCs) with high design productivity is a challenge of great interest. However, lack of coordination among different design layers has caused designers to make worst-case assumptions at individual design layers, leading to substantially suboptimal designs with poor reliability/energy/performance co-optimization or tradeoffs. This project is the first major effort dedicated toward a unified failure-resistant system from high-level synthesis to physical design with tight integration. It will build reliability-centric physical-aware high-level synthesis and high-level-guided physical design to bridge the gap between these two distant layers. A novel cross-layer engineering change order (ECO) framework will also be developed to couple high-level ECO with stable physical-level ECO. New tools and methodologies will be studied and provided to the system and physical design community targeting reliability while increasing overall design productivity and quality. Electronics have permeated modern society, which increasingly depends on reliable operations of these electronic systems. However, device-level scaling is heading in the opposite direction from system reliability. This project will transform existing SOC design methodologies through cross-layer integration. Research from this effort will be broadly disseminated through publications and presentations, active interaction with industrial collaborators, as well as infusion of new course material into classrooms and instructional laboratories. The principal investigators will continue their efforts in recruiting women and other underrepresented minorities into their research programs. They have previously reached out to K-12 students and will continue to do so in order to attract the best of them into the engineering profession.