Industrial Keynotes

Keynote Speaker

Ron Black
Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Codasip

“The revolution has started! How Custom Compute is disrupting the processor market”

Dr. Black, CEO at Codasip, has over 30 years of industry experience. Before joining Codasip, he has been President and CEO at Imagination Technologies and previously CEO at Rambus, MobiWire, UPEK, and Wavecom. He holds a BS and MS in Engineering and a Ph.D. in Materials science from Cornell University. A consistent thread of his career has been processors including PowerPC at IBM, network processors at Freescale, security processors at Rambus, and GPUs at Imagination.

Abstract: The processor industry needs new ways to create differentiated products. How? Through architecture optimization, hardware/software co-optimization, and domain-specific acceleration. In other words: through Custom Compute.
Making Custom Compute accessible to everyone through automation will have a profound impact on the processor IP market. Join Ron Black for his keynote to explore how the ability to tailor processor designs to specific workloads both unlocks unparalleled performance and efficiency and combines with current market trends to revolutionize the industry. Custom Compute will redefine what we call IP and lead to new practices and methodologies, with rippling effects for the whole SoC design space.

Keynote Speaker

Ivo Bolsens
Senior Vice President , Head of Corporate Research and Advanced Development,
AMD

“Navigating the Future Landscape of System-on-Chip Technologies”

Ivo Bolsens is senior vice president and Head of Corporate Research and Advanced Development at AMD. He oversees advanced hardware and software technology development, including future architecture directions and software stacks to enable emerging opportunities in the fields of high performance and adaptive computing. His team is also driving the university partnerships to create a thriving, global ecosystem for AMD technology in academia.

Bolsens joined AMD in 2022, as part of the Xilinx acquisition. At Xilinx, he served as the Chief Technology Officer in charge of corporate research. He joined Xilinx in 2001 from the Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC), an international research center based in Belgium. At IMEC he was vice president leading the R&D of digital signal processing hardware and software (DSP), as well as system-on-chip (SOC) design software. During his tenure at IMEC, he and his team spun-out three successful startups in the field of SOC design tools and wireless systems.

Bolsens serves on the advisory boards of IMEC, the Engineering Departments of San Jose State University and Santa Clara University, and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley. He is also a board member of EvoNexus, a startup technology incubator.

Bolsens holds a Master’s in Electrical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Applied Science from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium.

Abstract: Compute and data processing requirements of future complex systems are challenging the sustainability and scalability of existing semiconductor technologies that form the foundation of AI, HPC, IOT and wireless systems. It becomes extremely difficult and expensive to scale feature dimensions of semiconductor components. Moreover, traditional roadmaps are facing severe power and speed roadblocks. To overcome these roadmap challenges, we need to accelerate investments in innovative design technologies that will feed the semiconductor ecosystem and form the foundation of an ambient intelligent environment that monitors our health, guarantees our safety and improves our efficiency and seed new industries built on the capabilities of advanced chips
To unlock the major scaling bottlenecks and achieve orders of magnitude better compute per watt, innovative designs are required that combine high levels of compute parallelism with efficient domain specific architectures and optimized data movement and memory hierarchies. These solutions will have to benefit from the latest chiplet capabilities, advanced 3D technologies, high speed optical interconnect and new memory hierarchies. In order to make these semiconductor systems dependable and pervasive, security and power efficiency has to be an integral part of the design considerations.

Keynote Speaker

Claire Vishik
Former fellow and group CTO at Intel (until March 2023),
Co-founder and CTO of a stealth startup

“Modern computing as a driver of ubiquitous change”

Claire Vishik was until recently Intel Fellow and group CTO before she emarked on new adventures as a founder a CTO of a startup in the spring of 2023. Her work focuses on Artificial Intelligence, hardware and network security, Trusted Computing, privacy enhancing technologies, some aspects of cryptography and related global policy and trade issues. Claire was appointed to numerous advisory boards and boards of directors for technical organizations and government agencies, such as the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) and TDL (Trust in Digital Life), ENISA, FCC CSRIC, CyBoK, or UK Royal Society Cybersecurity effort. She led or co-led many initiatives, for example, IEEE blockchain TC, NIST CPC Public Working Group, or Cyber Leap Year Summit. Claire received her PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to Intel, she held leadership positions at Schlumberger Laboratory for Computer Science and AT&T Laboratories. Claire is the author of numerous peer reviewed papers and book chapters, editor of several books, associate/advisory editor of two journals, and inventor on 40 pending and granted US patents.

Abstract: It is self-evident that modern computing has transformed human civilization in many aspects, including the most mundane parts of everyday life. But it is frequently forgotten that many of the ideas that propel computing technologies and computing ecosystem forward were conceived decades if not centuries ago. Artificial Intelligence is one of such examples, but in many other areas, from digitization of information management to communications, autonomous systems and modern computation, the dreams and predictions of years ago are becoming reality. This talk will examine the evolution and challenges of computing technologies, including dead ends and unresolved issues. It will also link the progress in computing technology to the evolution of legal, societal, and policy areas, such as education, governance, and skills development.

Main Conference Keynotes

Keynote Speaker

Giovanni De Micheli
Professor and Director of the Integrated Systems Laboratory
EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland.

“SOC synthesis for evolving technology platforms”

Giovanni De Micheli is a research scientist in electronics and computer science. He is credited for the invention of the Network on Chip design automation paradigm and for the creation of algorithms and design tools for Electronic Design Automation (EDA). He is a Professor and Director of the Integrated Systems Laboratory at EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland. Previously, he was a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He was Director of the Electrical Engineering Institute (IEL) at EPFL from 2008 to 2019 and program leader of the Swiss Federal Nano-Tera.ch program. He holds a Nuclear Engineer degree (Politecnico di Milano, 1979), an M.S., and a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (University of California at Berkeley, 1980 and 1983).

Prof. De Micheli is a Fellow of ACM, AAAS, and IEEE, a member of the Academia Europaea, and an International Honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His current research interests include several aspects of design technologies for integrated circuits and systems, such as synthesis for emerging technologies. He is also interested in heterogeneous platform design including electrical components and biosensors, as well as in data processing of biomedical information. He is the author of Synthesis and Optimization of Digital Circuits, McGraw-Hill, 1994, co-author and/or co-editor of ten other books and of over 900 technical publications. His citation h-index is above 100 according to Google Scholar. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of IMEC (Leuven, B) and STMicroelectronics.

Prof. De Micheli is the recipient of the 2022 ESDA-IEEE/CEDA Phil Kaufman Award, the 2019 ACM/SIGDA Pioneering Achievement Award, and several other awards. 

Abstract: In this decade we are witnessing an acceleration of computing and communication capabilities due to both the need of providing better cyber services and to the power of new AI/ML methods. The key ingredients for this progress are the availability of evolutionary and revolutionary technologies and the capability to master new and complex design through electronic design automation (EDA).

This talk will address digital logic design for emerging technologies. In particular, I will review challenges and opportunities for various 3D CMOS technologies and their extension to hybrid 3D structures for Logic in Memory systems. I will consider next the revolution in EDA demanded by cryo-technologies, ranging from superconducting quantum-flux technologies to quantum computing platforms. I will conclude by outlining extensions and limitations of computing systems at the dawn of the singularity. 

Keynote Speaker

Hai "Helen" Li
Clare Boothe Luce Professor,
Department Chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Duke University

“Cross-layer Design Optimization for Processing-in-Memory AI Systems”

Hai “Helen” Li is the Clare Boothe Luce Professor and Department Chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Duke University. She received her B.S and M.S. from Tsinghua University and Ph.D. from Purdue University. Her research interests include neuromorphic circuit and system for brain-inspired computing, machine learning acceleration and trustworthy AI, conventional and emerging memory design and architecture, and software and hardware co-design. Dr. Li served/serves as the Associate Editor for multiple IEEE and ACM journals. She was the General Chair or Technical Program Chair of multiple IEEE/ACM conferences and the Technical Program Committee members of over 30 international conference series. Dr. Li is a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE CAS society (2018-2019) and a distinguished speaker of ACM (2017-2020). Dr. Li is a recipient of the NSF Career Award, DARPA Young Faculty Award, TUM-IAS Hans Fischer Fellowship from Germany, ELATE Fellowship, nine best paper awards and another nine best paper nominations. Dr. Li is a fellow of ACM and IEEE.

Abstract: With the globalisation of supply chains the design and manufacture of today’s electronic devices are now distributed worldwide, for example, through the use of overseas foundries, third party intellectual property (IP) and third party test facilities. Many different untrusted entities may be involved in the design and assembly phases and therefore, it is becoming increasingly difficult to ensure the integrity and authenticity of devices. The supply chain is now considered to be susceptible to a range of hardware-based threats, including hardware Trojans, IP piracy, reverse engineering, IC cloning and side-channel attacks. These attacks are major security threats to military, medical, government, transportation, and other critical and embedded systems applications. This talk will explore the role machine learning has to play in hardware-based threats and in improving hardware security.

Keynote Speaker

Marilyn Wolf
Koch Professor of Engineering,
Director of the School of Computing
University of Nebraska--Lincoln

“The Semiconductor Ecosystem and Workforce Development”

Marilyn Wolf is Koch Professor of Engineering and Director of the School of Computing at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She received her BS, MS, and PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University.  She was with AT&T Bell Laboratories 1984-1989, on the faculty of Princeton University 1989-2007 and Farmer Distinguished Chair at Georgia Tech 2007-2019.  Her research interests include embedded computing and VLSI systems. She has received the IEEE Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award, the IEEE Computer Society Goode Memorial Award, the ASEE Terman Award and IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Education Award. She is a Fellow of the IEEE and ACM.

Abstract:A number of countries now prioritize the development of their semiconductor industries.  The semiconductor ecosystem is broad and deep: a wide range of technologies; a huge expanse of applications that present different combinations of cost/capability/reliability requirements; and a complete lifecycle from product conception to design, manufacturing, deployment, and maintenance.  These opportunities also call for a holistic approach to workforce development that encompasses manufacturing, analog and digital design, embedded software and applications, deployment and maintenance.  This talk will survey this expanse of applications, the role of various technologies, and the opportunities for workforce development.

Panel Discussion

“The impact of Geo-Politics on Semiconductor Manufacturing and Supply Chain”

Abstract: Over the past decade political tensions between US/Europe and Asia has risen to a new height. Recent US sanctions and export controls on semiconductor products and technologies that could potentially be used to develop cutting-edge technologies for military use further exacerbated the US-China relationship.

The east European war in Ukraine and the soaring China-Taiwan tensions exposed worldwide vulnerabilities of many supply chains including food, energy, and semiconductors.

In case of Taiwan the significance of TSMC’s role as the world largest chip manufacturer presents a major risk to worldwide chip supply chain. Semiconductors have evolved into a critical commodity, such as oil, underpinning many critical infrastructures. Critical industries including tele- and mobile communications, automotive, aerospace, e-commerce massively depend on advanced semiconductor products (chips).

Recently, the US Chips and Science Act has been introduced with the objective to boost chip manufacturing on US soil to mitigate supply chain risks and dependencies on Taiwan and other foreign countries. Such a political move is expected to reshape the dynamics within the semiconductor industry.

The objective of this panel discussion is to bring key panellists from industry and politics to discuss following questions:

• What are the critical impacts of Geo-Politics on chip manufacturing and supply chain?
• What are the economic and technological impact of US sanctions and export controls?
• Can we quantify the opportunities for boosting semiconductor manufacturing in US an EU?
• How will the semiconductor manufacturing and supply-chain evolve within the next 10 years?
  

Panel Chair 

Ruban Kanapathippillai
Technology and Business Executive

Ruban is a proven Technology and Business Executive with significant experience, specializing in the partnership with technology executives and business teams to define and execute new products. Demonstrated success in building business as a founding member of two successful semiconductor and systems start-ups, playing a central role in securing early-stage venture investment, strategically leading through rapid growth, and exiting in deals worth $720m and $550m. Ruban has worked at Rockwell Semiconductor (Conexant), Intel Corp, Western Digital Corp and two of his own startups at executive management levels. During his career, Ruban has collaborated with semiconductor design and fabrication companies from US, Japan, S. Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, India, Germany and China.

Ruban holds MSEE from Stanford University where he completed his Masters degree, and BSEE degree from University of Minnesota at Minneapolis. He has been issued more than 30 US patents.

Panelists

• Marilyn Wolf, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
• Pete Rodriguez, Silicon Catalyst
• Giovanni de Micheli, EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland
• Jürgen Becker, KIT, Germany