James Myers, imec (02:35-02:55pm)

Abstract: System technology co-optimization: joining the technology dots
The world expects that future SoCs will continue to get faster, more efficient and more capable. But how can we deliver this with technology scaling getting harder with every generation? Design technology co-optimization (DTCO) has proven very successful in enabling equivalent scaling through technology boosters that improve logic and SRAM, and delivering compelling results at block level. Next must come system technology co-optimization (STCO) but this will require agile new top-down methodology, that picks among a large set of competing technology options to deliver system level benefits above and beyond block level power, performance and area. A key challenge for STCO is when addressing the broader compute system scaling we must consider a variety of applications, their implementation constraints and specific workloads. For example what helps a large scale-out GPU perform faster AI training is unlikely to help a small battery-constrained wearable device run AI inference. So how does STCO work, and what sort of gains can we hope for? This presentation will share imec's STCO program strategy.