Signal Processing Seminar
Wednesday, February 13, 2008, 4-5:00 pm
2269 Beckman Institute

Title:  Computation as Estimation:  Estimation-Theoretic IC Design Reduces Power Consumption and Improves Robustness

Speaker:  Sriram Narayanan
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Coordinated Science Lab
University of Illinois

Abstract: 

Modern Integrated Circuits (ICs) are designed as massively parallel systems as a 
consequence of diminishing silicon feature sizes. This has adversely impacted 
reliability because of increased errors due to process and environmental variations, 
and particle hits.  Viewing hardware errors as analogous to measurement or system 
noise allows us to borrow results from estimation theory and extend Moore's law.  
The estimation-theoretic framework provides a design optimization formalization that 
enables power/reliability trade-off in broad classes of applications.  Two applications 
described here show that specific instantiations of the framework yield significant 
power savings and system reliability.