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Power Delivery and Integrated DC-DC Conversion
Overview:
CMOS chips have evolved to operate at steadily lower
supply voltages and increasing power densities, leading
to drastic reductions in the required impedance of the
supply distribution network - making the design of this
network increasingly difficult. Furthermore, with the
move to parallelism and heterogeneity as the only
energy-efficient means to improve computing performance, there is a clear need
to support multiple, independent supply voltages on the
die. Thus, in this project we are exploring power
delivery architectures consisting of local, integrated
DC-DC converters to generate variable voltages with
parallel linear regulators to control the supply
impedance. Using this approach, we aim to maximize
the overall efficiency and robustness of power delivery
to high-performance, energy-efficient digital chips.
Sub-Projects and People:
Integrated DC-DC Conversion: Hanh-Phuc Le, Prof.
Seth Sanders, Prof. Elad Alon
Mixed-Signal Building Blocks
Overview:
Mixed-signal building blocks such as phase-locked loops
and analog-to-digital converters remain critical to the
overall performance and power characteristics of many
integrated systems. Our projects in this area are
therefore developing new techniques enabled by the
characteristics of modern, high-performance digital
transistors to significantly improve the
energy-efficiency of these blocks.
Sub-Projects and People:
Energy-Efficient Digital PLLs: John Crossley, Prof.
Elad Alon
Pipeline ADC with Passive Voltage Gain: Yida Duan,
Prof. Elad Alon, Prof. Bernhard Boser
Next-Generation Wireless Circuits and Systems
Overview:
With the movement towards flexible, software-defined or
cognitive radios, the availability of 7GHz of unlicensed
spectrum in the 60GHz band, and the continued desire to
deploy ubiquitous wireless nodes, the next generation of
wireless systems will likely have significant different
characteristics and constraints than current designs
based on narrow-band and fixed frequency radios.
With the mobility inherently enabled by wireless
connectivity, achieving these new capabilities at a
minimum cost in power dissipation remains one the key
challenges. In this set of projects we are
focusing on the circuit and system design techniques
that can achieve the energy-efficiencies necessary to
enable these next generation wireless applications.
Sub-Projects and People:
Cm-Range Wireless Communications: Simone Gambini,
Prof. Elad Alon, Prof. Jan Rabaey
Energy-Efficient Broadband RF Front-Ends: Lingkai
Kong, Prof. Elad Alon
Multi-Gb/s 60GHz Wireless Transceivers Design:
Chintan Thakkar, Prof. Ali Niknejad, Prof. Elad Alon
Nano-Electro-Mechanical
Integrated Circuit Technology
Overview:
The threshold voltages of today's CMOS transistors are
pinned to the point where they optimally balance leakage
and dynamic energy consumption, ending the ability to
increase performance while maintaining constant power
density through simple scaling alone, and forcing the
move to parallelism. Even with ideal parallel
scaling, the achievable energy-efficiency of CMOS
transistors is limited by their subthreshold leakage.
In this project we aim to develop a new IC technology
based on nanometer-scale electro-mechanical switches,
whose zero off-state leakage and high on-state
conductance allow them to achieve dramatically reduced
power consumption. Fully realizing the potential
of this technology requires innovation at every level of
integrated circuit design, including logic, memory,
communication, power management, and micro-architecture.
People:
Hei Kam, Fred Chen (MIT),
Prof. Tsu-Jae King Liu, Prof. Dejan Markovic (UCLA),
Prof. Vladimir Stojanovic (MIT), Prof. Elad Alon
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