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

由于热衷于将更多的晶体管集成到单个集成电路中，半导体行业生产了许多代电子产品，这些产品越来越强大，成本越来越低，导致信息和通信技术的大规模扩张，其经济效益被估计为近几十年来全球生产率增长的一大部分。这三个主要半导体技术领域的源源不断的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。前两个领域的最新创新使人们有可能设想计算能力更强、功能更丰富的新一代产品。本研究在本课题的推动下，试图在上述第三个方面进行相应的创新。该计划的核心部分是开发一门新的高级本科课程，该课程将使学生在新的CAD环境为协作工程提供基础设施支持的情况下，在一个为期一学期的项目中共同努力。当前设计最先进的集成电路的努力受到当前CAD流程特点的缺点的影响，例如，缺乏对探索其硬件和软件组件的设计空间以寻找更好的解决方案的支持；在系统级同时优化多个组件的有限能力；以及许多工具所需的较大的学习曲线和较长的执行时间。该项目将研究新一代CAD方法和工具。具体地说，研究团队将为系统级设计开发一个高度互动的新环境，提升设计师的体验，激发他们的创造力，并促进整个工程团队的持续协作。拟议的方法利用了最近在监督和组合设计--空间探索方面的工作，以及学习方法的应用，以帮助设计师使用先进的高级综合工具。

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.