The advent of the era of artificial intelligence, or AI, has brought new challenges and new opportunities to the microelectronics industry.
“When it comes to making progress in AI, energy is the showstopper,” Sarma Vrudhula says. “Artificial intelligence computations take incredible amounts of electrical energy. For us to continue to advance, and for overall sustainability, we must find ways to reduce power consumption.”
Vrudhula is a professor of computer science and engineering in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. To power the next phase of the AI revolution, he will design new microchips and new systems to meet these emerging needs.
The engineer and semiconductor expert is a notable figure in the development of computer-aided design software for circuit systems and microelectronics. Vrudhula has spent the better part of the last 20 years researching ways to automate the process of creating new types of microchips, or chips.
A microchip, also simply called a chip, is a collection of semiconductors, which are usually tiny pieces of silicon that conduct electrical energy that can serve as a computer’s processor or memory unit. For years, chips were designed by hand with electrical engineers drawing patterns and circuits to be etched on the silicon the way architects would draft blueprints.
Thanks to the work of experts in operations research and design automation, such as Vrudhula, software was developed to take over this planning. Today, engineers can feed design and performance expectations into sophisticated software programs, such as those from Cadence and Synopsys, to receive an optimized design to meet their needs.
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