Technology trends and implications on SoC design

Abstract

Semiconductor technology evolution is increasingly driven by disruptive innovations rather than classical 2D scaling. These innovations, and potential new technologies such as 3D integration, will allow device counts to continue to increase well beyond the 1 – 2 billion of today's chips. With this ongoing growth in available devices the challenges in design quality and productivity will also grow, along with the investments needed for technology development and manufacturing. The challenges for chip and system designs lie in finding affordable means to harness these capabilities to deliver significant system level value to end users. In this presentation I will explore several of these technology trends, in the context of SoC design for high-performance systems, and describe several of the initiatives underway in IBM Research to address them.