Speaker:

Jiang Xu, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, SAR

Title:

Inter/Intra-Chip Optical Networks: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract:

The performance and energy efficiency of a multi-core system is determined by not only its processor cores but also how efficiently they collaborate with each other. As new applications continuously require more communication bandwidth, metallic interconnects gradually become the bottlenecks of multi-core systems due to their high power consumption, limited bandwidth, and signal integrity issues. Optical interconnects are promising candidates to bring low power, high bandwidth, and low latency to address inter-chip as well as intra-chip communication challenges. Silicon-based photonic devices, such as optical waveguides and microresonators, have been demonstrated in CMOS-compatible fabrication processes and can be used to build inter/intra-chip optical networks. This talk will discuss the opportunities and challenges of this emerging technology and present our recent findings.

Bio:

Jiang Xu received Ph.D. degree from Princeton University. He worked at Bell Labs and later at NEC Laboratories America as a Research Associate. He joined a startup company, Sandbridge Technologies, from 2005 to 2007 and developed as well as implemented two generations of NoC-based ultra-low power multiprocessor systems-on-chip for mobile platforms. In 2007, Dr. Xu joined Hong Kong University of Science and Technology as an Assistant Professor, and established the Mobile Computing System Lab and Xilinx-HKUST Joint Lab. He currently serves as an Associate Editor of ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems and IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integrated Systems. He is an ACM Distinguished Speaker and a Distinguished Visitor of IEEE Computer Society. He served on the organizing committees and technical program committees of many international conferences, including ICCAD, CASES, ICCD, ISVLSI, VLSI, EMSOFT, CODES+ISSS, NOCS, ASP-DAC, etc. Dr. Xu authored or coauthored more than 60 book chapters and papers in peer-reviewed journals and international conferences. He and his students received Best Paper Award from IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI in 2009, and Best Poster Award from AMD Technical Forum and Exhibition in 2010. He coauthored a book titled Algorithms, Architecture and System-on-Chip Design for Wireless Applications (Cambridge University Press). His research areas include network-on-chip, multiprocessor system-on-chip, embedded system, computer architecture, low-power VLSI design, and HW/SW codesign.