2021 ITC plenary and keynote, Tuesday.

ITC Plenary and Awards Presentation

Plenary Keynote

Chih-Yuan Lu

President Micronix, Chairman Ardentec

Future Prospects of Semiconductor memories — Advancements and Challenges

Abstract: Semiconductor memories embrace a bright future in this big data era. The recent global pandemic challenges essentially accelerate the human society toward the 4th generation of industrial revolution of digital life augmented with smart devices. The fast evolution of AI, 5G, automotive, data center, cloud, and edge intelligent devices for IoT all trigger more market demands in semiconductor memories. SRAM, DRAM and Flash are classic standard semiconductor memories, and we believe that these classic memories will continue tremendous momentum to improve the technology with ever better performances, power, and cost. On the other hand, new emerging memories and new emerging computing architectures have potential to create new paradigms. Memory devices will become the central role during data processing, and emerging computing architecture such as computing-in-memory (CIM) or in-memory search (IMS) will complement the conventional computing architectures to create disruptive applications. Memory devices will continue to improve the memory density and bandwidth performances, while reliability are always the major priority to ensure the memory quality. We observe obvious increased complexities in the wafer sort (WS) and final test (FT) for advanced memory technologies, and we would encourage the society to conceive more advanced and even intelligent testing methods to support advanced memory technologies. Co-optimizations between processing, design, testing, and memory controllers must help to manage the large tuning parameters to adapt to production variations to ensure the high quality of memory products with affordable cost.

Biography: Chih-Yuan Lu received B.S. degree from National Taiwan University, and Ph.D. degree in physics from Columbia University, NYC.

Dr. Lu has been a professor in National Chiao-Tung University, and with AT&T Bell Labs.; later he joined ERSO/ITRI in 1989 as a Deputy General Director responsible for the MOEA grand Submicron Project. This project successfully developed Taiwan the first 8-inch manufacturing technology with high density DRAM/SRAM, and thus led Taiwan semiconductor industry onto world stage.  He was therefore granted the National Science & Technology Contribution Award by Taiwan Prime Minister, due to his leadership and achievements in this Submicron Project.Dr. Lu was the co-founder, and later the President of Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp., which was the spin-off memory IC Company from ITRI with Taiwanese technology independency. In late 1999, Dr. Lu founded Ardentec Corp., he now is the Chairman and CEO of Ardentec Corp. a global hidden champion type VLSI testing company.  CY also served Macronix International as CTO, SVP, and now as its President. Dr. Lu led Macronix’s technology development and product teams to successfully establish the state of the art non-volatile memory technology, and led its overall operation. CY’s leadership and technology excellency make Macronix as a top player in non-volitile memory field with high quality and strong IP positions.Dr. Lu is also a Distinguished Chair Professor in National Taiwan University, also as NTU’s Distinguished Alumni. Due to his seminal contributions to semiconductor technology and achievements in IC industry, he was granted the Honorable Doctorate Degree from National Chiao-Tung University; and the highest life honor from ITRI as “ITRI Laureate”.Dr. Lu has published more than 550 papers and has been granted 160 worldwide patents. He was elected a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of APS, and a Fellow of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). He also received IEEE Third Millennium Medal; and the most prestige semiconductor R&D Award in Taiwan from Pan WenYuan Foundation. In 2012 CY was granted the IEEE Technical Field Award – IEEE Frederik Philips Award as the first one from greater China area. In 2013 he was elected to be granted the ROC national highest honor “ROC Taiwan Presidential Science Prize”; In 2014, “The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS)” granted him the “TWAS 2014 Prize in Engineering Sciences” and later a TWAS Fellow. CY was elected as a Fellow of USA National Academy of Inventors (NAI) in 2017; and in 2018, Dr. Lu is elected an Academician of Academia Sinica, the highest honor in scientific achievements for global ethnic Chinese elites.

Wednesday Keynote

Ron Nersesian

Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Keysight Technologies

Refusing Limits in Technology Innovation 

 

Abstract: More reach.  More data.  Longer battery life.  Today’s engineers are constantly rethinking what’s possible in a world where everyone, and everything, is connected. Not only has the pace of integration accelerated, today’s designs do more, with less resources. Leading-edge disruptive innovations don’t come without pushing the limits of what’s technically possible and making difficult tradeoffs.

In this session, Ron Nersesian, CEO for Keysight Technologies, will share examples of the trends and challenges we see customers innovate through every day, and how software automation and AI will become key to breaking through the limits coming next.

Biography: Ron Nersesian is chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Keysight Technologies. In November 2011, he was named executive vice president and chief operating officer of Agilent Technologies. The following year, in November 2012, he was promoted to president and chief operating officer.

When Agilent announced the separation of its electronic measurement business in 2013, Nersesian was appointed Keysight president and CEO and led the launch of the new company. Keysight became a public, independent company in November 2014. Nersesian was appointed chairman of Keysight in 2019.Nersesian began his career in 1982 with Computer Sciences Corporation as a systems engineer for satellite communications systems. In 1984, he joined Hewlett-Packard and served in a range of management roles during his tenure. In 1996, Nersesian joined another industry player as vice president of worldwide marketing. He subsequently assumed other senior management roles through 2002, including senior vice president and general manager of the company’s digital storage oscilloscope business.Nersesian joined Agilent Technologies in 2002 as vice president and general manager of the company’s Design Validation Division. In 2005, he was named vice president and general manager of the company’s Wireless Business Unit and manager of Agilent’s Santa Rosa, California site. In 2009 Nersesian was named president of Agilent’s Electronic Measurement Group.Nersesian holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Lehigh University and an MBA from New York University, Stern School of Business. He also serves as a member of Georgia Tech’s Advisory Board.

Wednesday Visionary

Roger Jang

Professor, CSIE, National Taiwan University

Machine Learning and Corpus Design for EDA and Beyond

Abstract: We have been building faster computers to host innovative ML (machine learning) applications such as image recognition and language understanding. But can we reverse the roles and use ML to help EDA (electronic design automation) in order to create better performing chips and computers? The answer is definitely yes. In this talk, we shall cover two such examples, including wafer failure analysis and side channel attacks using ML. Actually these two examples only scratch the surface since there are a number of ML tasks for EDA to produce better computers for advanced ML applications. We believe such positive feedback in the loop will advance both ML technologies as well as chip/computer performance. Moreover, we shall also address the guidelines for ML corpus design, and touch on corpus-hungry ML applicatons that outperform humans by a large margin and were unthinkable before the current AI era.

Biography: Jyh-Shing Roger Jang received Ph.D. from EECS Department at UC Berkeley, where he studied fuzzy logic and neural networks with Lotfi Zadeh, the father of fuzzy logic.

As of July 2021, Google Scholar shows over 18,000 citations for Dr. Jang’s seminal paper on ANFIS published in 1993. After obtaining his Ph.D., he joined the MathWorks to coauthor the Fuzzy Logic Toolbox (for MATLAB). He has since cultivated a keen interest in implementing industrial software for machine learning. He was a professor in the CS Dept. of National Tsing Hua Univ., Taiwan, from 1995 to 2012. Since August 2012, he has been a professor in the CSIE Dept. of National Taiwan Univ. (NTU), Taiwan. He served as the IT director for NTU Hospital during 2017-2019, and the director for FinTech Center at NTU during 2018-2020. He is currently serving as CTO of E.Sun Financial Holding Company at Taipei. His research focuses on machine learning in practice, with wide applications to speech recognition/assessment/synthesis, music analysis/retrieval, image classification, medical/healthcare data analytics, and FinTech.

Thursday keynote

Shankar Krishnamoorthy

General Manager Digital Design Group & Corporate Staff, Synopsys

Addressing Design Challenges in the Era of SysMoore: From Architecture to Silicon Lifecycle Management

Abstract:  Amount of compute power required in today’s SoCs, especially in AI applications, is outpacing Moore’s Law by a wide margin. Orders of magnitude compute are needed to keep pace with this new era of scaling and system complexity, otherwise known as the SysMoore era. In this presentation we examine the challenges driving the next wave of innovative design solutions. Starting with architecture exploration to silicon-lifecycle management, these solutions  will help engineers create designs that keep pace with the compute power and silicon health needs for today and tomorrow.

Biography: Shankar is the general manager of the Digital Design Group, responsible for the digital design platform including synthesis, signoff analysis, place-and-route, test automation, and formal verification solutions.

Most recently, he served as senior vice president of the Digital Implementation Group, delivering several game-changing innovations including Fusion Compiler, RTL Architect, 3DIC Compiler, TestMAX solutions. Shankar has more than 25 years of experience leading world-class teams that have delivered the industry’s premier IC physical design and logic synthesis solutions.
Before rejoining Synopsys in 2017, he was at Mentor Graphics where he served as general manager of the IC Design Solutions Division. He joined Mentor in 2007 as part of the acquisition of Sierra Design Automation, where he was the founder and CTO. Prior to Sierra Design, Shankar led Synopsys’ Physical Synthesis and Logic Synthesis R&D organizations. He began his career at Synopsys in 1992 working on logic synthesis technology.
Shankar received his M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Texas, Austin in 1992, and his bachelor’s degree in Technology and Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology,
Bombay in 1990.

Thursday Visionary 

Cheng-Wen Wu

Distinguished Chair Professor, NTHU

Sport Technology Industry: A New Frontier for AI, 5G, and Semiconductor

Abstract: In this talk I will introduce the new semiconductor opportunities in the fast-growing sport industry that is being populated and renovated by emerging technologies. The sport industry is much larger than the semiconductor industry itself. Development of sport technology requires cross-disciplinary research and education in the sport domain and the technology side, i.e., in addition to the domain knowledge in sport science, we need to integrate technologies in IOT, AI, 5G, cloud computing, advanced sensors, etc. Trends in areas like smart venue, immersive media, quantified athlete, e-sport, real-time online streaming, fan engagement, etc., will be introduced. Examples of existing products, systems, and services powered by semiconductors will be given, and future directions that calls for innovative semiconductor design and test technologies will be addressed.

Biography:  Cheng-Wen Wu received the BSEE degree from National Taiwan University in 1981, and the MS and PhD degrees in ECE from UCSB in 1985 and 1987, respectively.

Since 1988, he has been with the Department of EE, National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), Hsinchu, Taiwan, where he is currently a Tsing Hua Distinguished Chair Professor. He has served at NTHU as the Director of Computer Center, Chair of EE Department, Director of IC Design Technology Center, Dean of the College of EECS, and Senior Vice President for Research. He has also served at ITRI as the General Director of the SOC Technology Center, and Vice President and General Director of the Information and Communications Labs in the past, and currently Senior Vice President. Dr. Wu’s current interests include memory test and repair, and design and test of symbiotic IOT devices and systems. He holds a National Chair Professorship, and is a Fellow of the IEEE. He also was a pitcher and short-stop in the Tainan Giants, which won the championship in the 1971 Little League World Series.