IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine - Spring 2014 - 75

Plenary round table speakers, moderators, and organizers, from left: Anantha Chandrakasan, Udo-Martin Gomez, Robert Gilmore, Mike
Muller, Atsushi Takahara, William Dally, Alex Jinsung Choi, Siva Narendra, and Hoi-Jun Yoo.

desired performance, size, power, and
cost. There is no doubt, however, that
the advance of software and platforms
lowers the barriers to entry for domain
experts to create solutions with phone
applications or integration of development boards into a new system.
Next, Mike Muller of ARM presented
his views about system trends, saying
that circuits and systems are equally
important. The highly optimized, networked systems now being developed,
whether high-performance wired computer clusters, leading-edge wireless
smartphones, or ultralow-power sensors, can only be designed by teams.
These teams need a good understanding of the overall system requirements
and use cases at the same time that they
specialize in their own areas of expertise, from architecture to implementation. Even within a single domain-for
example, a low-power wireless sensor-
the optimal circuit design and clocking
architecture are very different depending on whether the power source is a
battery or an energy-scavenging system. System optimization must be
done both globally and locally, and this
can only be achieved if all members of
the team have a proper understanding
of the system's use cases.
Atsushi Takahara of NTT presented
a talk about the importance of applications and systems. A smartphone
is a specific example of a networked
device that has an impact on the
social realm. Smartphones make people's lives easier and more fruitful by
enabling connection to a rich variety of
applications and information. In disaster situations, such as the Great East
Japan earthquake of 2011, we have
learned that smartphones can help

people in dire circumstances. On the
other hand, smartphones can easily
bring down the system with a flood of
traffic that is beyond its design expectations. This type of system trouble
might occur more easily in the future
because of the high computational and
communication ability of each device
and the large number of devices in
the system. In networking technology,
software-defined networks (SDNs) and
network functions virtualization (NFV)
have been proposed in order to provide more flexibility for the demands
of the social realm. A harmonious collaboration of devices and the social
realm can bring about safe and reliable
networking technologies.
William Dally of NVIDIA also said
that circuits and systems are equally
important for driving large changes.
Contemporary chips are power limited, and supply voltage scaling has
nearly stopped. In this post-Dennard era, the main challenge for all
systems-networked or not-is to
improve efficiency through circuits
and architecture. Process matters far
less than in the past. Today, a new
process node gives about a 1.2-times
improvement in efficiency-compared
with 2.8 times under Dennard scaling.
To make up for this gap, we must look
for improvements elsewhere. Lowvoltage-tolerant circuits enable more
efficient operating points. Better architecture reduces the overhead associated with instruction and data supply.
The 100-times efficiency advantage of
specialized hardware demonstrates
the magnitude of typical overhead.
The challenge is to eliminate this overhead without sacrificing flexibility and
programmability. Networked systems

offer the additional option of moving
some processing to the cloud, dividing applications strategically between
client and server.
Finally, Alex Jinsung Choi of SK
Telecom in Korea gave a presentation
about the opportunities in semiconductors brought about by new systems and applications. The massive
growth of network services is increasing the demands placed on devices
and infrastructure. The semiconductor market today is thus open to significant opportunities for growth and
technical innovation. As more mobile
devices connect to the Internet, data
usage for multimedia services, big
data, and cloud services is increasing explosively. The growing volume
of data causes heavy traffic in existing systems as they are transmitted,
aggregated, and analyzed, thus creating new challenges for next-generation
systems: systems must be more agile
and service-driven and easier to manage and operate. In particular, a need
for system rearchitecting (including
storage, server, SDN and NFV, HetNet,
high-throughput network appliances,
and Internet of Things platforms) is
emerging, and at the same time the
importance of data trust and security is drawing attention. This system evolution requires support from
low-power, high-performance semiconductor technology and circuits.
Next-generation systems must therefore be vertically integrated-from
semiconductors, devices, and platforms to networks and service applications-to resolve the challenges they
face in a world of ever-increasing data.

IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE

-Hoi-Jun Yoo

s p r i n g 2 0 14

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine - Spring 2014