Development of Efficient and Interdisciplinary Techniques for Physical Design of Integrated Circuits and and Beyond

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Integrated circuits (IC) are used in every aspect of our modern lives, and their performance and cost have significant impact on our society. ICs are made of billions of transistors ranging between 45 to 14 nm in size, making them smaller than most viruses. To be able to deal with the sheer numbers and extreme sizes of IC, every aspect of their production needs to be automatically designed and optimized using Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools. The overall goal of the proposed research program is use optimization, data mining, parallel programming and estimation techniques to design better EDA tools that address the above challenges. In addition, the developed design automation tools will be modified to optimize the operation of other research areas such as communication and oil and gas extraction.***The pace by which EDA researchers have to come up with new technologies has been unparalleled in history. For the past 50 years, the number of transistors in IC has been doubling every 18 months, as predicted by the Moore's law. This means that new techniques, algorithms and tools need to be developed to be able to deal with the added complexities. The first theme of the research program deals with development of EDA tools for computer-aided design (CAD) of IC. Major challenges faced by today's IC designers are related to the huge number of the transistors that make an IC, the extremely small sizes of them and the high energy demand required for high-speed computation. The goal of the first theme is to develop innovative and creative EDA methodologies that can solve the aforementioned problems and significantly improve the performance, cost and reliability of IC. In the proposed program, multidisciplinary techniques such as optimization, mathematical modeling, estimation, computational geometry, data mining, parallel programming, and artificial intelligence are used along with the traditional EDA methodologies to develop creative, interdisciplinary and transformative solutions. The proposed research activities build on my group's award-winning work in EDA to push the boundaries of what is possible in circuit placement and physical design. ***The second theme of the proposed research program is to apply the methods developed for EDA to other fields in engineering. For example, the algorithms used for optimizing the power in circuits can also be used for optimizing the power used in communication systems. This part of the proposed research program is aimed at diversifying the research and fostering research innovation and excellence through collaborations.***The proposed program will have a direct impact on the multi-billion-dollar EDA industry, and aligns with Canada's high priority research direction of Information and communication Technologies (ICT). The second theme will also have a positive impact research in the area of Natural Resources and Energy.