Thermally-Aware Power Distribution Networks for Vertically Integrated Systems

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Electronic products have played an overarching role in our societies. The evolution of portable and handheld devices in the past two decades has further augmented the pervasiveness of electronics into our daily activities. In general, the majority of modern electronic products require a heterogeneous set of components. These products include common portable devices or sophisticated systems used in medicine and industry for safety, monitoring, prevention, or therapy. This system heterogeneity will be intensified in the future, since the primary demand for faster processing of the information is augmented by the requirement for accurate sensing and detection of environmental stimuli.Although these devices have created a flourishing market, the design of high performance and low power computing systems beyond consumer demands remains an omnipresent challenge. The design of more powerful computers is driven not only by the need to answer important scientific questions but also to address new or on-going societal needs. A characteristic example is the data-centers which they offer a variety of services but the relating energy-cost is increasing at an alarming rate. To mitigate these issues scientists and researchers explore disruptive technologies. A promising technology is three-dimensional (3-D) or vertical integration. This emerging technology has appealed to both industry and academia for several reasons. For example, considering the case of portable products, a vertically integrated system can drastically reduce the size of the board, which hosts the various components, by stacking these subsystems into a multi-tier structure reducing the overall size and improving power consumption.This project will contribute to the evolution of vertically integrated systems by providing new design techniques and innovative analysis tools for the power distribution network of these systems. To better explain the complexity as well as the significance of this task, consider the power grid that supplies our residences. A similar yet severely constrained grid provides current to each transistor within an integrated circuit. The design complexity of this network for vertical multi-tier circuits is much higher similar to the case where the electric installation of a multi-storey building is much more complicated than that of a house. The scale of the problem where billion of "consumers" (i.e. transistors) must be provided with abundant current underlines the need for faster and accurate analysis methods. In this project, the analysis will be complemented by optimization methods, as the resources for the power network are limited and compete with other resources. Using our civic analogy, think of a situation where phone and power cables compete for a limited open space.Efficient solutions to this problem cannot resort solely to existing design methodologies and/or numerical techniques due to the size of the problem as well as the heterogeneity of the envisioned vertical systems. The proposed research therefore aims at advancing the analysis and design methods of power networks for integrated systems while considering the particular traits and constraints relating to these systems. The results of the project will boost this emerging technology, bringing vertical integration a stride closer to economical high-volume manufacturing.