It is widely recognized that CMOS transistor scaling, as a vector for the pursuit of performance levels predicted by Moore's Law and required by future applications, will not last through the next decade. Alternatives must be found, at both architectural and device levels. In this context, the emergence of new research devices based on nanotubes (CNFET) or nanowires (NWFET), offers the opportunity to provide novel logic building blocks, to explore new possibilities for digital design and consequently to reconsider the paradigms of computing architectures to achieve orders of magnitude improvements in conventional figures of merit. In this talk, I will look at the emergence of technologies capable of building large regular structures out of silicon nanowires or carbon nanotubes, and how logic functions can be mapped onto them, particularly in the context of reconfigurable applications. Some pointers to the future evolution of these technologies and associated architectures will be given, as well as the issues that must be solved before nanoscale computing fabrics become a viable alternative to CMOS.

Speaker information

Ian O'Connor (IEEE S'95-M'98-SM'07, IEE S'87-M'98) is Professor for Heterogeneous and Nanoelectronics Systems Design in the Department of Electronic, Electrical and Control Engineering at Ecole Centrale de Lyon, France. He is currently head of the Heterogeneous Systems Design group at the Lyon Institute of Nanotechnology, of which he is also one of the vice-directors. Since 2008, he also holds a position of Adjunct Professor at Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal, Canada.
His research interests include design methods and tools for physically heterogeneous systems on chip, and their application to novel system architectures based on non-conventional devices. He has authored or co-authored around 100 book chapters, journal publications and conference papers and has been workpackage leader or scientific coordinator for several national and european projects. He also serves as an expert with the french Observatory for Micro and Nano Technologies (OMNT).