SHF: Small: Rethinking CAD for System-Level Design via Interactivity, Learning, and Collaboration

在将更多晶体管封装到单个集成电路中的热情中，半导体工业已经生产了许多代电子产品，这些电子产品越来越强大且越来越便宜，从而导致信息和通信技术的大规模扩展，其经济效益被估计为近几十年来全球生产率增长的很大一部分。在三个主要半导体技术领域的持续创新是这一成功故事的根源：（i）器件和制造，（ii）电路和架构，以及（iii）计算机辅助设计（CAD）方法和工具。最近在前两个领域的创新使我们有可能设想新一代的产品，这些产品在计算能力上更强大，在功能上更丰富。 本项目的研究试图在上述第三个领域进行相应的创新。 该计划的核心部分是开发一门新的高级本科课程，该课程将让学生共同参与为期一个学期的项目，并为新的CAD环境提供协作工程的基础设施支持。 当前设计最先进的集成电路的努力存在表征当前CAD流程的缺点，例如，缺乏对跨硬件和软件组件探索设计空间以寻找更好解决方案的支持;在系统级同时优化多个组件的能力有限;以及许多工具需要较大的学习曲线和较长的执行时间。该项目将研究新一代的CAD方法和工具。具体来说，研究团队将为系统级设计开发一个高度互动的新环境，提升设计师的经验，激发他们的创造力，并促进整个工程团队的持续合作。所提出的方法利用最近的工作监督和组合设计空间探索，并应用学习方法，以帮助设计师使用先进的高层次的合成工具。

In a zeal to pack more transistors into a single integrated circuit, the semiconductor industry has produced many generations of electronic products that are increasingly more powerful and less expensive resulting in massive expansion of information and communication technologies with economic benefits that are estimated as a large part of global productivity growth during the recent decades. A continuous stream of innovations across the three main semiconductor technology areas lies at the root of this success story: (i) device and manufacturing, (ii) circuits and architectures, and (iii) Computer-Aided Design (CAD) methodologies and tools. Recent innovations in the first two areas make it possible to envision new generations of products that are stronger in computational power and richer in functional capabilities. The research enabled by this project, attempts to undertake corresponding innovations in the third area mentioned above. A core part of this program is the development of a new senior-level undergraduate course that will engage the students in working together on a semester-long project with the infrastructure support for collaborative engineering provided by the new CAD environment. Current effort of designing state-of-the-art integrated circuits, suffers from shortcomings that characterize current CAD flows, e.g., the lack of support for exploring the design space across its hardware and software components in search of better solutions; the limited capabilities in optimizing simultaneously multiple components at the system level; and the big learning curve and long execution times that many tools require. This project will investigate a new generation of CAD methodologies and tools. Specifically, the research team will develop a new environment for System-Level Design that is highly interactive, exalts the designers' experience, inspires their creativity, and promotes continuous collaboration across the engineering team. The proposed approach leverages recent work on supervised and compositional design-space exploration, and the application of learning methods to assist designers in the use of advanced high-level synthesis tools.