Electrical & Computer Engineering     |     Carnegie Mellon

Wednesday, September 21, 12:00-1:00 p.m. HH-1112

 

Rob A. Rutenbar
Carnegie Mellon University

What's Up in C2S2 -- the MARCO Focus Center for Circuit & System Solutions

C2S2 is a consortium of 13 US universities chartered by the US semiconductor industry and US department of defense to attack the problems of building next-generation circuits as CMOS technology scaling hits fundamental physical limits. I'll give a short overview of how C2S2 is organized, what the major research thrusts are, and highlight some of the most interesting of recent results in the areas of robust digital and analog/RF circuits, models for highly scaled devices, novel circuit fabrics, architectures for future wireless and wireline communication systems, and interface circuits made in unusual technologies. (If the audience is particularly nice, I might even show the video about the circuits that plug into the monkey brains.)

Bio:

Rob A. Rutenbar is the Stephen Jatras Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at CMU. He received the PhD from the University of Michigan in1984, and subsequently joined the faculty at CMU. He is the founding Director of the MARCO Focus Center for Circuit & System Solutions (C2S2). In 1998, on a leave of absence from CMU, he co-founded Neolinear Inc., and served as its Chief Scientist until its acquisition by Cadence in 2004. His research pioneered much of today's commercial analog circuit and layout synthesis technology. His current work ranges from models of uncertainty in circuit design tools, to large-scale layout algorithms, to silicon architectures for speech recognition. He's a 2001 winner of the SRC Aristotle Award for excellence in education, and a 2004 winner of the SRC Technical Excellence Award for contributions to analog design tools. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.