SHF: Small: Low Power System-on-Chip Circuits and CAD

能源影响着社会的方方面面。由于电子产品无处不在，改善和提高了我们的生活水平，美国的大部分电力消耗都没有引起注意。例如，根据美国环保局提交给国会的报告，2006年我们手机和电脑使用的数据中心的电力成本达到45亿美元，相当于15个发电厂。这项提议开发了一种变革性的技术，将电子产品的功耗降低了三倍。这项技术的核心是基于一种理论，该理论适用于集成电路上的逻辑和通信元件的时序，其中信号可以在给定的介质中传输到光速。这笔资金的主要结果将是开发电路、软件(计算机辅助设计)和设计技术，使这种低功耗技术能够从科学实验室转移到商业产品中。相关的时序理论将被映射到当前的商业设计和验证流程中，使用翻译的正确性的正式证明。这将使该技术能够快速商业化。基于详尽的行为研究，将开发一种新的超低功耗电路族。该系列同样可以被技术映射到铸造厂使用的当前制造库中。最后，通过设计和制造复杂的片上系统，我们将展示功率降低三倍以及快速制造商业产品的能力。这项工作的主要影响是减少了我们无处不在的电子设备的能源消耗。能源使用的影响具有世界性的影响。在过去十年中，电子产品的能源消耗呈指数级增长。集成电路所消耗的能源已经在二氧化碳排放方面对经济和环境产生了相当大的影响。这项拨款进行的研究将继续提高美国的技术领先地位和竞争力。向工业转让技术还将创造数百个就业机会，并提供应税收入。这项研究得到了业界的大力合作和支持，包括与德州仪器、英特尔、门拓图形公司和安森美半导体的直接互动。这项工作建立在犹他大学雄厚的研究基础之上。该大学在增加工科学生人数方面有着良好的外展记录。

Energy impacts all aspects of society. Much of the U.S. electrical energy consumption occurs unnoticed due to the ubiquitous nature of electronics that improves and enhances our standard of living. For example, according to the US EPA Report to Congress, the electricity costs of data centers used by our cell phones and computers amounted to $4.5 billion dollars in 2006 -- the equivalent of 15 power plants. This proposal develops a transformative technology that reduces the power consumption of electronics by a factor of three. The core of the technology is based on a theory applied to the timing of logic and communication elements on an integrated circuit, where signals can travel up to the speed-of-light in the given medium. The primary result of this funding will be to develop circuit, software (computer-aided design), and design technology that will enable this low power technology to be moved from scientific laboratories into commercial products. The relative timing theory will be mapped onto the current commercial design and validation flow, using formal proofs of correctness for the translation. This is what will enable fast commercialization of the technology. A new ultra low power circuit family will be developed based on exhaustive behavioral investigations. This family can likewise be technology mapped to current fabrication libraries used by the foundries. Finally, a factor of three reduction in power as well as the ability to rapidly build commercial products will be demonstrated through the design and fabrication of a complex system-on-chip.The primary impact of the work is the reduction of energy used by our ubiquitous electronics. The impact of energy usage has worldwide ramifications. Electronics have had an exponential growth in energy consumption over the last decade. The energy consumed by integrated circuits already pose a considerable impact on the economy and environment in terms of CO_2 emissions. The research performed by this grant will continue to improve U.S. technology leadership and competitiveness. The technology transfer to industry will also create hundreds of jobs and provide taxable revenue. This research has significant collaboration and support from industry, including direct interactions with Texas Instruments, Intel, Mentor Graphics, and ON Semiconductor. This work builds on the strong research foundation of the University of Utah. The University has a strong record of outreach to increase the engineering student population.