Intelligent Multi-Level Power-Aware Circuits and sysTems (IMPACT) Lab
Memristors for Neuromorphic Design
A memristor chip is designed and fabricated for neuromorphic microprocessor. A memristor is an analog device to exploit the multilevel conductance states and to regulate the flow of electrical current. Typically, memristors are connected as a crossbar structure, where memristors are positioned in each cross point acting as synapses in a neural network. [Related Paper JETCAS'19 TVLSI'19 IOTJ'21 TC'21 JLPEA'22 TED'22 JETCAS'22 JETCAS'23].
3D Integrated Circuits
A 3-D test circuit comprised five silicon layers has been fabricated to experimentally analyze power distribution, horizontal and vertical thermal coupling, and cross-layer microprocessor. Each device layer is manufactured in 130-nm Chartered CMOS technology before 3D bonding, TSV fabrication, and wafer thinning by Tezzaron. [Related Paper MEE'16 MEE'18 TVLSI'18].
Video Embedded SRAM
A test chip is fabricated to develop an sizing-priority based application-driven memory for low-power mobile video applications. We investigated the size dependent memory failure characteristics and modeled the influence of the memory failure on video output, connecting the hardware design and application requirement. [Related Paper TVLSI'17]
Ultra-low Power Non-volatile SRAM
A CMOS compatible non-volatile SRAM (cNV SRAM) is fabricated to achieve energy efficient on-chip memory. It works as conventional 8T SRAM to keep high speed in work mode; in sleep mode, it backs up the data in NV component and switches off the power supply, thereby minimizing the leakage energy without data loss. [Related Paper TC'16]
Microprocessor Based on PNS-FCR
A test chip is fabricated to verify a p-type/n-type dynamic circuit selection (PNS) algorithm and a flexible charge recycling (FCR) design methodology for data path design. The measurement results demonstrate that the proposed ALU reduces power consumption by 31%, validating the ability of PNS-FCR to save power. [Related Paper TVLSI'16]
Multistage Impedance Adapting Compensation (IAC) amplifier
Other Chips
Many chips are also fabricated to respectively verify digital, analog, and emerging memory design, such as power efficient microprocessors, programmable amplifier, and tri-state based register files.