Keynotes
The “Compute Continuum” and its Energetics
Jan Rabaey
University of California at Berkeley, USA
Abstract Over the past decades, we have seen computing evolve from an isolated and centralized endeavor to an environment that exploits the heterogeneity of geographically distributed resources to dynamically execute parallel and distributed applications. The heterogeneity spans from massively parallel compute centers executing complex generative AI models to tiny wirelessly-connected sensors embedded in robotics, self-driving cars, the environment and the human body. In a sense, the world around us is being transformed into an all-embracing computing network that provides intelligent assessment, helps manage resources and operates robotic entities, all while intimately keeping the human in the loop (the “compute continuum”). This evolution is rapidly and exponentially accelerating at all levels of the compute hierarchy. Yet that growth is most likely to be stunted by energy limitations. Already today the demand for computational power exceeds availability as well as the capability of delivering that power to the right place and time. In this presentation, we explore how technology innovation can help to address some of these concerns with different solutions for the high-performance platforms and the distributed sensory systems. In the end though, it is only a system-level perspective – considering the compute continuum as a connected dynamic distributed and evolutionary system – that will deliver a sustainable long-term solution.
Biography
Jan is a Professor in the Graduate School in the EECS Department the University of California at Berkeley, after being the holder of the Donald O. Pederson Distinguished Professorship at the same institute for over 30 years. He is a founding director of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center (BWRC) and the Berkeley Ubiquitous SwarmLab, and has served as the Electrical Engineering Division Chair at Berkeley twice. In 2019, he also became the consulting CTO of the System-Technology Co-Optimization (STCO) Division of IMEC, Belgium. Prof. Rabaey has made high-impact contributions to a number of fields, including low power integrated circuits, advanced wireless systems, mobile devices, sensor networks, and ubiquitous computing. Some of the systems he helped envision include the infoPad (a forerunner of the iPad), PicoNets and PicoRadios (IoT avant-la-lettre), the Swarm (IoT on steroids), Brain-Machine interfaces and the Human Intranet. His current interests include the conception of the next-generation distributed systems, as well as the exploration of the interaction between the cyber and the biological worlds. He is the primary author of the influential “Digital Integrated Circuits: A Design Perspective” textbook that has served to educate hundreds of thousands of students all over the world. He is the recipient of numerous awards among which the 2009 EDAA lifetime achievement award and the 2025 IEEE James H. Mulligan Jr. Education Medal, is a Life Fellow of the IEEE, and has been involved in a broad variety of start-up ventures.
Toward End-to-End Open Platforms for the Embodied AI Era.
Luca Benini
Università of Bologna, Italy and ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Abstract AI is accelerating into the generative era, and it is poised to disrupt multiple businesses, especially as AI capabilities are being "embodied" everywhere, from earbuds to cars to humanoid robots. Embodied AI needs to tackle major challenges in energy efficiency, safety, security, and real-time predictability, while curtailing computational complexity. In this talk I will focus on chip and system design for embodied AI, moving from ultra-low power AI-accelerated MCUs for smart wearables to large Chiplet-based systems-in-package for intelligent robots and satellites. I will emphasize the strategic importance of an end-to-end (models,software, instruction set architecture, digital IPs, EDA, PDKs)open-platform approach to ensure a healthy innovation ecosystem, long term sustainability, safety and security.
Biography
Luca Benini holds the chair of digital Circuits and systems at ETHZ and
is Full Professor at the Università di Bologna. He received a PhD from
Stanford University. His research interests are in energy-efficient parallel computing systems, smart sensing micro-systems and machine learning hardware. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, of the ACM, a member of the Academia Europaea and of the Italian Academy of Engineering and Technology. He is the recipient of the 2016 IEEE CAS Mac Van Valkenburg award, the 2020 EDAA achievement Award, the 2020 ACM/IEEE A. Richard Newton Award, the 2023 IEEE CS E.J. McCluskey Award, and the 2024 IEEE CS Open Source Hardware contribution Award.
AI for chip design: Hype or Reality?
Alberto Sangiovanni Vincentelli
University of California at Berkeley, USA
Abstract
AI why now?
Big data - In 2020, all internet users generated 64.2 ZettaBytes (a trillion GigaBytes) of data, which exceeded the number of detectable stars in the cosmos. In 2023, the average internet user created about 1.7 MB of data per second, equal to 146,880 MB daily. We expect the figures to rise, with data creation reaching 147 ZB by the end of 2024. How to make sense of this amount of information?
Computing power
- Nvidia: On a per GPU FP8 sparse basis, Blackwell has performance of 10TeraBytes (1,000 GigaBytes)/sec and memory bandwidth of 8TeraBytes/sec.
- Tesla Exapod: 1018 (one quintillion) floating point operations per second.
AI, Machine Learning, Deep Learning and Generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT)
- Definitions and history
- Neural networks
- Transformers
- Large Language Models
- Caveats (hallucinations, errors…)
- Computing Architectures: GPUs, TPUs, Tenstorrent, Sambanova
Biography
Alberto Sangiovanni Vincentelli is the Edgar L. and Harold H. Buttner Chair of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley. He is an author of over 1000 papers, 17 books and 2 patents in the area of design tools and methodologies, large scale systems, embedded systems, hybrid systems and innovation.
He was a co-founder of Cadence and Synopsys, the two leading companies in the area of Electronic Design Automation. He is a member of the Board of Directors of both public and privately held companies. He was a consultant or member of the Adviosry Boards of of several tech companies such as BMW, Mercedes, Magneti Marelli, Intel, ST microelectronics, HP, General Motors, United Technologies, Lutron, Lendlease and Elettronica. Currently, he is a member of the following boards/committees: Advisory Board, Xseed; Investment Committee of Indaco Ventures and Fondo Next. Board of Directors: Cadence, KPIT Technologies, eGap, Exein, Cy4Gate. He is Chairman of the Board of Quantum Motion, Innatera, Phoelex, e4Life and Phononic Vibes. From January 2013 to 2016, he was the President of the Strategic Committee of the Italian Strategic Fund. He was member of the Scientific Council of the Italian National Science Foundation (CNR) from 2001 to 2015. From February 2010 to December 2020, he had been a member of the Executive Committee of the Italian Institute of Technology, where he is now a member of the Technical Scientific Committee. From July 2012 to July 2015, he was Chairperson of the Comitato Nazionale Garanti per la Ricerca. He is the Chairperson of the Strategy Board and of the International advisory Board of the Milano Innovation District (MIND). He is the recipient of several academic honors, research awards and honorary degrees including the IEEE/RSE Wolfson James Clerk Maxwell Medal “for groundbreaking contributions that have had an exceptional impact on the development of electronics and electrical engineering or related fields”. Alberto obtained an electrical engineering and computer science degree (“Dottore in Ingegneria”) summa cum laude from the Politecnico di Milano, Italy in 1971 and holds four Honorary Doctorates from University of Aalborg, KTH, AGH and University of Rome, Tor Vergata.
Technology for Agriculture 5.0, Food 5.0 and Health 5.0
Chris Van Hoof
KU Leuven, Belgium
Abstract While industry 5.0 is in advanced stages of development in many industry segments, some fields lag behind – for reasons of cost (or return on investment), regulatory & safety, complexity. At the same time, sustainable healthcare, sustainable agriculture, and safe & sustainable food remain key problems societies face. This presentation will focus on several sensor innovations that are helping this push towards industry 5.0 in agriculture, food and health. Examples in agriculture and food are linked to digital orchards and to plant-based protein development and to environmental monitoring. In the field of preventive and personalized health, ingestible sensor innovations will be covered. Integrated photonics is becoming a workhorse to achieve new and scalable sensing modalities.
Biography
Besides having a PhD in electrical engineering from KULeuven and being Vice President R&D at imec, Chris Van Hoof is also general manager of the One Planet Research Center. The multidisciplinary research facility has over one hundred scientists and engineers in its ranks working with chip and digital technologies with a mission to create a society where everyone can live healthy lives and have access to sustainable food. Chris Van Hoof is also professor at KULeuven. Throughout his career his research covered technologies, systems, and application innovations, and went from deployment in space to implantable medical devices. His work led to 5 startups, 4 in the healthcare domain.
Quantum Computing/Sensing: Are Cryo-CMOS Circuits Essential?
Edoardo Charbon
Director Advanced Quantum Architecture Lab
Abstract
The core of a quantum computer or a quantum sensor is generally an array of qubits or quantum detectors and classical electronics for its control; it operates on the qubits/detectors with nanosecond latency and a very low noise. Classical electronics is generally operating at room temperature, however recently, we have proposed that it moves closer to the qubits/detectors and operates at cryogenic temperatures to improve compactness and reliability. This has introduced new constraints to the electronics, especially in terms of noise and power dissipation, due to the extremely weak signals generated by quantum devices that require highly sensitive circuits and systems, along with very precise timing capability. We advocate the use of CMOS technologies to achieve these goals, whereas the circuits will be operated at 2-10K. We believe that these, collectively known as cryo-CMOS circuits, will make future qubit arrays scalable, enabling a faster growth in qubit count. Quantum sensing will become more reliable and robust to the conditions of operation. In the talk, the challenges of designing and operating complex circuits and systems at deep-cryogenic temperatures will be outlined, along with preliminary results achieved in the control of quantum devices by ad hoc integrated circuits that were optimized to operate at low power in these conditions. The talk will conclude with a perspective on the field and its trends.
Biography
Edoardo Charbon (SM’00 F’17) received the Diploma from ETH Zurich, the M.S. from the University of California at San Diego, and the Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1988, 1991, and 1995, respectively, all in electrical engineering and EECS. He has consulted with numerous organizations, including Bosch, X-Fab, Texas Instruments, Maxim, Sony, Agilent, and the Carlyle Group. He was with Cadence Design Systems from 1995 to 2000, where he was the Architect of the company's initiative on information hiding for intellectual property protection. In 2000, he joined Canesta Inc., as the Chief Architect, where he led the development of wireless 3-D CMOS image sensors. Since 2002 he has been a member of the faculty of EPFL, where he is full professor. From 2008 to 2016 he was with Delft University of Technology’s as full professor and Chair of VLSI design. He has been the driving force behind the creation of deep-submicron CMOS SPAD technology, which is mass-produced since 2015 and is present in telemeters, proximity sensors, and medical diagnostics tools. Since 2014, he has pioneered the use of Cryo-CMOS technology for the control of quantum devices, especially qubits, to achieve scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computing. His interests span from 3-D vision, LiDAR, FLIM, FCS, NIROT to super-resolution microscopy, time-resolved Raman spectroscopy, and cryo-CMOS circuits and systems for quantum computing. He has authored or co-authored over 500 papers and two books, and he holds 30 patents. Dr. Charbon is the recipient of the 2023 IISS Pioneering Achievement Award, he is a distinguished visiting scholar of the W. M. Keck Institute for Space at Caltech, a fellow of the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience Delft, a distinguished lecturer of the IEEE Photonics Society, and a fellow of the IEEE.
Quantum Computing: Is it for Real?
Abstract What started 45 years ago as a visionary discovery for the future of computing at the bottom of matter while raising eyebrows whether a joke or breakthrough at the time, Quantum Computing has returned along with Artificial Intelligence, to the limelight as the hottest technology areas with great industrial application potential. This talk will first take a look at the Quantum Computing ecosystem , companies, technologies, claims. Moving beyond promises the technology advances of different research groups and their selected hardware choices will be summarized. The last part of the presentation will focus on spin-qubit technology state-of-the-art and the design and implementation challenges of a quantum processor including its control electronics. Integration of core computation and qubit control as well as scalability to the required qubit capacity, will be analyzed from the perspective of the potential of Nano-CMOS as integration platform. An assessment of the advances during the last decade and how close or far Quantum Computing is today to becoming a mainstream computation paradigm will be addressed in concluding remarks.
Biography
Andrei Vladimirescu (LF’17) received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in EECS from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a key contributor to the SPICE simulator, releasing the SPICE2G6 production-level SW in 1981. He pioneered electrical simulation on parallel computers with the CLASSIE prototype simulator as part of his PhD.
For many years Andrei was R&D director leading the design and implementation of innovative Electronic Design Automation (EDA) products in software and hardware for Analog Devices Inc., Daisy Systems, Analog Design Tools, Valid Logic and Cadence.
Currently he is Professor involved in research projects at the University of California at Berkeley and the Technical University of Delft as well as consultant to industry. His research activities are in the areas of CMOS, design, simulation and modeling, AI-based analog synthesis and Cryo-CMOS for quantum computing. Andrei is an IEEE Life Fellow and IEEE CASS Vice-president of Conferences.