RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK,
N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), the world's
leading university research consortium for semiconductors and related
technologies, named a team of graduate students from Purdue University as
winners in the SRC/SIA IC Design Challenge. The Purdue team's winning
design was for a chip-to-chip wireless data link using a 60 GHz
transceiver. More than 40 universities and 120 engineering students
competed to design circuits with potential future electronic applications.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the students and certainly
affects their futures in a very positive way," said Professor Byunghoo
Jung, faculty advisor of the winning Purdue team. Professor Jung is no
stranger to these contests. Four contests ago, SRC held the Copper Design
Challenge, its first design contest. Professor Jung was then a graduate
student and was on the winning team from University of Minnesota.
"This also is a great opportunity for the industry as SRC and SIA
member companies cultivate future designers for the semiconductor
business," said SRC's Dale Edwards, an AMD assignee and contest organizer.
The Design Challenge theme is "Performance at the Limits" and the
winning design exemplifies this theme, pushing the chip-to-chip data link
to 7.5 Gbps using 60 GHz wireless technology. Wireless data links show
many advantages compared to existing techniques such as wired or optical
data links. Wired data link paths exhibit severe signal attenuation
requiring complex and power hungry circuitry to overcome while optical
techniques usually require difficult and costly IC fabrication
technologies. Several unique circuit techniques were used in the winning
design.
The Purdue team consisted of five students and one co-lead. Teams from
University of Minnesota
with their entry, "Ultra-low Power, Battery-less RFID Blood Monitoring
System," led by Professor Ramesh Harjani, and Carnegie Mellon University
with their entry, "A Tunable Multiband RF MEMs Transceiver Front-End," led
by Professor Tamal Mukherjee, took second and third places in the
competition, each having three students per team.
In addition to receiving cash awards that total $18,000, the three
winning university teams along with five other finalists have qualified to
compete in the final phase of the Design Challenge where they will
fabricate these designs in Jazz Semiconductor's SBC18 180nm SiGe
technology. All eight teams will present posters at SRC's TECHCON 2008.
The eight finalists will vie for $50,000 in cash prizes, to be announced
in December.
Thanks go to the Design Challenge sponsors who provide the awards that
are made as gifts to the winning universities to be used in support of IC
design education programs at their university. These include Advanced
Micro Devices, Inc., Analog Devices, Inc., Cadence Design Systems,
Freescale Semiconductor, Inc., IBM Corporation, Intel Corporation,
Intersil Corporation, Jazz Semiconductor, LSI Corporation, Mentor Graphics
Corporation, National Semiconductor Corporation, NVIDIA Corporation,
Quik-Pak Division of Delphon Industries, Texas Instruments Incorporated,
SRC and SIA. Special thanks go to Jazz Semiconductor for donating the
fabrication support.
About SRC
Celebrating 26 years of collaborative research for
the semiconductor industry, SRC defines industry needs, invests in and manages the
research that gives its members a competitive advantage in the dynamic
global marketplace. Awarded the National Medal of Technology, America's
highest recognition for contributions to technology, SRC expands the
industry knowledge base and attracts premier students to help innovate and
transfer semiconductor technology.
About SIA
The SIA is the leading voice for the semiconductor industry
and has represented U.S. semiconductor companies since 1977 and SIA member
companies comprise more than 85% of the U.S. semiconductor industry.
Collectively, the chip industry employs a domestic workforce of 232,000
people.