The First Nanometer Design Challenges Workshop

DSO is an innovation-driven technology community, housing microelectronics and optoelectronics related enterprises, a state-of-the-art Microelectronics Innovation Center (MIC), fabrication plants, research and development centers and specialized academic institutions and residential areas. With His Highness Sheikh Maktoum at the helm of affairs at DSO, the initiative is on building sector-specific zones.

The first day of this prestigious workshop organized by Dubai Silicon Oasis, was flagged off with an inaugural address by Dr. Richard Newton, Dean and Roy W. Carlson Professor of Engineering University of California, Berkeley.
Professor Newton spoke about, Overview of Nanometer Design Challenges.

He said, "According to the International Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), its days are numbered. Somewhere between 2012 and 2015, many believe the semiconductor industry will run out of good ideas. But, sometime around 2020-2025 we hope to have come up with something entirely new and better chips, perhaps, based on carbon nanotubes. We cannot give up and must find innovative ways to close the gap and keep the economic growth moving forward."

Professor Newton, also presented two major advanced research activities underway at Berkeley and other major research centers.

The second speaker of the day was Clive Watts, Senior Product Manager, ARM Ltd, UK. Watts held forth on, A Combined Hardware & Software Approach to Nanometer Leakage Control.

"Power and energy management is an important aspect for consideration in any SoC or overall product design. As leakage current will play a significant role in the future, measures must be taken to control leakage and ensure power and energy usage remain as low as possible," said Mr. Watts, and proceeded to make a presentation exploring some of the areas ARM is actively working on minimizing leakage.

Post lunch, Jamil Kawa, Group Director, R&D Synopsys, INC, presented his speech on The Emerging Nanotechnology: Today's Reality and the Future Direction: "Nano technology is viewed by many as the technology with promise of making everything around us better while others look at it with suspicion, as another bubble that will ultimately burst. I believe that neither of these points will prevail."

Jamil Kawa continued by saying, "The use of nano technology today is not limited to the electronic arena where nano scale technologies are most popular, it has made it to biological applications, medicine, cosmetics, clothing, building materials, the car industry, etc." Kawa's talk gave a primer on the nano materials used and the applications they're used in, and his talk was summarized with remarks and observations about nano technology moving forward.

The next speaker for the day was Dr. Roberto Zafalon of STMicroelectronics, Italy, who spoke about Nanometer Design and Process Challenges for Low Power Applications. "The rapid advances of computing applications, pushed by the fast evolving technology for wireless network connectivity and by the need to provide personalized, context-aware multimedia services, are driving the evolution of mobile terminals into complex multimedia platforms," said Dr. Zafalon. After his talk, latest solutions regarding frequency and voltage dynamic control, as well as solutions for leakage power management was discussed. A selection of significant industrial results obtained by the application for low-power techniques to proprietary designs covering different application domains were reported as well.

With the opportunity to create increasingly complex system-on-chip designs with nanometer manufacturing capabilities, verification challenges continue to grow at an exceptional rate.

Swami Venkat of Synopsys, India, outlined these verification challenges, including simulation throughput, testbench development and reuse, functional error analysis and debug, standard interconnect protocol checks, functional coverage measurement and verification closure. Swami Venkat's presentation highlighted proven techniques and methodologies, such as coverage-driven verification, assertion-based verification and formal analysis.

The opening day of The First Nanometer Design Challenges Workshop concluded with a seminar by Swami Venkat and Rami Alzanoon of Synopsys, Dubai.

The seminar titled Finding More Bugs Faster with Proven Verification Methodologies, introduced Synopsys Discovery Verification Platform, an integrated system, RTL, equivalence checking and mixed-signal verification solution that provides high performance and efficient interactions among best-in-class technologies. The seminar also introduced state-of-the-art proven verification methodologies that will help design teams find more bugs faster and address the immense challenge of verifying today's complex designs.