10/17/2011
AAiT
In this Lecture:
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Microprocessor Fabrication
Lecture 02
Trends and Prospects
Fundamentals of Microcomputers
(Contd)
ECEg - 4501
Daniel D. DECE
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FabricationDesign
Fabrication
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A microprocessor is nothing, but a large digital integrated circuit
on a semiconductor wafer.
Millions of transistors are integrated on the wafer to construct
functional circuits. Today a transistor as small as 32nm is being
processed by using special CMOS process
The CMOS technology has made it possible to integrate several
useful HWs with the microprocessor core such as: MMU, PMU,
Cache, GPU,
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ECEg - 4501
10/17/2011
From Sand to Silicon Chips
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The Process Slides
Manufacturing - Video
(MEMC in Texas)
Technology Trends and prospects
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Trends - Hardware
Trends - Architecture
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Moores law has expired
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Parallelism and redundancy
The number of transistors on a chip cannot be doubled every
two years
Build as many as possible similar units and Keep the system as
busy as possible
Computing in hardware
Switching frequency has hit the limit
Dedicate a HW unit for a certain frequent function
For a Silicon based system, it doesnt seem possible to clock
faster anymore
Layered Architecture
A quest for new materials
- New material research is one of the hot issues around the globe
- Carbon as a new playground
- Molecular computing and Cellular automata
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- Keep system functions in a hierarchy
- Precedence dependency and order
- Stochastic execution paradime
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10/17/2011
Trends - Computing
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Heterogeneous Computing
Mixed platforms mixed algorithm mixed solution
Learning and adaptation
- From hard-computing to intelligent computing
(mimicking biological systems)
- Programs that write programs
High performance Computing (HPC)
- Real-life simulations and analysis
- Cloud Computing
- Computing without computers - the end of the PC
ECEg - 4501