CRII: SHF: WINGS -- Wireless Interconnects for Next-Generation Systems

New York University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

The development of low-latency, energy-efficient, and reconfigurable on-chip wireless interconnect infrastructure has the potential for reducing the carbon footprint of electronic systems. This research will be integrated with the graduate-level courses on design of VLSI and Nano-electronic devices to be taught by the PI at her institution. The dissemination of open-source software generated in this research via nano-HUB facilities at Purdue University is expected to provide significant impact by serving a broad community of students, researchers, and engineers. Further, the software generated in this research will be used for in-class projects and assignments providing students with a unique opportunity to learn about Exascale computing without abstracting the fundamentals of device physics. Undergraduate students will be advised through the undergraduate summer research program at NYU School of Engineering. Participation of the PI in National Center for Women in Technology program at NYU will facilitate involvement of underrepresented minorities in the research program. The technical objective of this research is to make major advances in the design and optimization of on-chip communications infrastructure by exploiting plasma waves in graphene to implement waveguides and nanoantennas. By marrying disparate technologies - CMOS electronics and graphene plasmonics - a new heterogeneous architecture is proposed to enable terahertz-band communication between several computing elements within a range of 10 cm. The project will develop an analytical model-based benchmarked design space exploration of the interconnect architecture covering implementation aspects (area and energy) and network-level consideration (number of cores and network architecture). Overall, this research will drive connectivity to the full potential of scaled CMOS by improving communication bottleneck in a heterogeneous computing environment.