CpSC 538G: Numerical Computation for Silicon Systems

Course Description

Microelectronic manufacturing is enabling new classes of silicon devices including mixed-analog/digital designs, micro-electro-mechanical devices, and silicon photonics. These technologies are dramatically changing the ways computational devices are designed and built. Mixed analog-digital design allow WiFi, cameras, and audio to be integrated into small mobile devices. Micro-mechanical accelerometers and gyroscopes enable these devices to detect motion, compute position, and provide kinetic interaction. Silicon photonics offers dramatically lower energy and higher bandwidth for system interconnect, to enable higher performance computation in a wide range of applications.

All of these stress traditional modeling, simulation, and verification methods. This course will give an overview of methods from numerical computation, control theory, and formal verification with applications for these emerging silicon technologies. The course will take a "workshop" approach. Problems will be solicited from the students and used as examples throughout the term. The first third of the course will be an introduction to numerical methods, dynamical systems theory, and hybrid systems. The remainder of the course will survey research papers while applying the techniques to applications from mixed analog-digital design, micro-mechanical systems, and silicon photonics.

Reading List