EE-Newsletter 2009. Volume 1 2009 / SPRING 02 03 04 06 08 10 12 14 16 18 19 20
02 / EE Newsletter
MIRAGE Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology / 03
Llaboratory introduction 04 / EE Newsletter
Interview Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology / 05
06 / EE Newsletter
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology / 07
Major Course Division Group 08 / EE Newsletter
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology / 09
EPSS, KEPCI, CTEP 10 / EE Newsletter
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology / 11
12 / EE Newsletter
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology / 13
14 / EE Newsletter
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology / 15
Highlights of the 2009 International Solid-State Circuit Conference (ISSCC) The International Solid-State Circuits Conference is the foremost global forum for presentation of advances in solid-state circuits and systems-on-a-chip. The Conference offers a unique opportunity for engineers working at the cutting edge of IC design and use to maintain technical currency, and to network with leading experts. - ISSCC Vision Statement The theme of this year s ISSCC was Adaptive Circuits and Systems. Though semiconductor manufacturing technology may be close to reaching the physical limits of Moore s Law, ISSCC-2009 showed that we are clearly not there yet. Presenters at ISSCC-2009 demonstrated how advances in technology and circuit innovation can be combined to make more adaptable devices, using digital control and programmability to provide benefits for many applications. Advances in semiconductor technology lead to lower energy consumption in consumer electronics. Rene Penning de Vries (CTO of NXP Semiconductors) showed how backlighting in LCD TVs is the major source of wasted power in flat-panel televisions. Second-generation LCD TVs have now been introduced that achieve lower black levels, and save power, by replacing CFL with white LED backlights. The next step in LCD backlighting is to replace the white LEDs with clusters of red, green and blue LEDs eliminating the need for color filters. New design techniques enable multi-band 3G wireless applications. ST-NXP Wireless and Ericsson Mobile Platforms (now merged as ST-Ericsson), collaborated to produce a tri-band WCDMA/HSPA and quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE receiver in a single chip. Cost is reduced by eliminating the external SAW filters that would typically be required to prevent interband interference in 3G receivers. On-chip internal calibration of critical circuits eliminates the production cost of calibration during handset manufacture. Qualcomm also showed a new chip that reduces (but does not eliminate) SAW filters. Qualcomm used an oldergeneration low-cost 0.18 m RF CMOS technology, while making extensive use of on-chip digital calibration to meet multi-band performance requirements. MaxRise of Taiwan announced development of a Mobile ISDB-T Tuner at ISSCC which they claim offers the smallest chip size and lowest power consumption to date. As a standalone tuner for ISDB-T, this chip fabricated in a mainstream 0.13 process would be used as an add-on feature in cellular handsets. Advances in Multi-media processors NXP Semiconductors, along with university researchers, announced a 65nm CMOS JPEG co-processor that operates with a power supply of only 0.45 volts. The design innovations permit extending battery life while supporting still image and 15fps/30fps VGA applications. MediaTek (Taiwan) presented a highly integrated 90nm CMOS SoC for Blu-Ray disc players; incorporating a General Copy Protection unit, and support for multiple video 16 / EE Newsletter
and display formats. Cost reduction for integrating all the Blu-ray player functionality in a single SoC is claimed to be 32%. Renesas Technology took the approach that dedicated processors are preferable to singlechip SoCs for minimizing power consumption in cellular handsets. The 65nm chip achieves a power dissipation of 342mW, integrating a video codec for recording and playback of full- HD video. MStar Semiconductor, along with designers from the National Taiwan University, described a 90nm SoC that pushes HDTV to another level; 3D and quad HDTV. According to the designers, to implement 3D 1080p video with today s processing techniques would require 82.4TOPS computing power and 54.6TB/s memory access. Panasonic presented A 45nm Single-Chip Applicationand-Baseband Processor Using an Intermittent Operation Technique, a complex approach to minimizing power consumption in wireless handsets by selectively turning off an unnecessary circuits on the fly during light-load applications. Innovations in Digital Wireless Applications MediaTek developed a high performance dedicated GPS SOC using 0.11 RF-CMOS. The design reduces cost by eliminating external SAW filters, and by achieving a first by integrating a switching mode power supply (SMPS) on the same chip with the sensitive RF circuitry. The device is designed primarily for portable navigation devices, or as an add-on in CDMA handsets, with power consumption of 34mW during tracking stage and 45mW during acquisition. Researchers at IMEC and KU Leuven in Belgium showed a prototype receiver design for a single-chip radio that is reconfigurable via digital programming for GSM, DVB-H, LTE, WiMAX and WLANg/n applications. By exploiting the speed and density of 45nm digital CMOS, the design is suitable for inexpensive complete single-chip integration with a digital processor. NXP Semiconductors (Netherlands) and the ST-NXP Wireless partnership (Singapore) presented the first fully integrated physical-layer (PHY) SoC fabricated in a baseline 65nm CMOS process that supports all three frequency band groups of WiMedia v1.2 without requiring any on-chip inductors for the RF circuits. Marvell Semiconductor described a dual-mode WiMAX/WLAN (802.16e and 802.11b/g/n) dual-band directconversion radio in 90nm CMOS. This chip addresses the challenge of providing for seamless switching from WiFi to WiMAX networks while co-existing with Bluetooth/GPS/cellular transmissions, through circuit innovations such as smart blocker detection. Intel has been the leading proponent of mobile internet devices (MIDs). As a step toward high integration in state-ofthe-art manufacturing processes, Intel presented A 1.1V 5- to-6ghz Reduced-Component Direct-Conversion Transmit Signal Path in 45nm CMOS that supports co-existence of WAN (WiMax, LTE, GPRS) and WLAN/PAN (Bluetooth, WiFi) applications on the same IC. By demonstrating performance from a 1.1V supply, in a 45nm process, this prototype shows the potential for size and power reductions in comparison to Marvell s 90nm design. ISSCC Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology / 17
ISSCC 학회에서의 KAIST 입지 18 / EE Newsletter
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology / 19
전면 표지 사진을 제공해준 최정민(석사) 학우에게 감사의 말을 전합니다. 후면 표지 사진은 전자과 통합 클럽의 공식 배포자료입니다. 2009년 봄호에 대한 건의사항이 있으면, 다음 이메일로 연락주시기 바랍니다. - newslett@eeinfo.kaist.ac.kr -