Asynchronous circuits have many potential advantages over their synchronous counterparts in terms of robustness to parameter variations, wide supply voltage ranges, and potentially low power by not needing a clock, yet their promise has not been translated yet into commercial success due to several issues related to design methodologies and the need for handshake signals. Stochastic computing is another processing paradigm that has shown promises of low power and extremely compact circuits but has yet to become a commercial success mainly because of the need for a fast clock to generate the random streams.
In this talk we will go over three complementary circuit techniques: Asynchronous Stochastic Computing (ASC), Asynchronous Stream Processing (ASP) and Asynchronous Impulse Radio (AIR). These techniques combine the best features of asynchronous circuits with the best features of stochastic computing to enable extremely compact and low power IoT sensing nodes. Together they can fulfill the promise of smart dust, a concept that was ahead of its time and yet to achieve commercial success.
Mircea R. Stan is the Virginia Microelectronics Consortium (VMEC) professor at the University of Virginia. He is teaching and doing research in the areas of high-performance low-power VLSI, Processing in Memory, temperature-aware circuits and architecture, Cyber-Physical Systems, spintronics, and nanoelectronics. He leads the High-Performance Low-Power (HPLP) lab and is an associate director of the Center for Automata Processing (CAP). He received the 2018 Influential ISCA Paper Award, the NSF CAREER award in 1997 and was a co-author on best paper awards at ASILOMAR19, LASCAS19, SELSE17, ISQED08, GLSVLSI06, ISCA03 and SHAMAN02 and IEEE Micro Top Picks in 2008 and 2003. Prof. Stan is a fellow of the IEEE, a member of ACM, and of Eta Kappa Nu, Phi Kappa Phi and Sigma Xi.
Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/285151