ECE 3030
Link for Video Lecture: Asif Khan – YouTube
Link for ECE 3030 SemicondutorGPT: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-Wz4h6XhrV-ece-3030-lecture-1-10-slide-explainer
ECE 3030 deals with the physical aspects of computation. Our perspective in this course is as follows. Digital information represented by zeros and ones are voltages and currents carried by electrons or holes (opposite of electrons); information processing is done by electronic switches that allow or block the flow of electrons or holes called transistors; information is carried to different part of the chip and the outside world through metal wires (interconnects) by electrons; information can stored by electrons trapped in a metal layer in certain devices.
Approximately 40% of the course will be devoted to develop an understanding of the transistor, more precisely the metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effecttransistor–the work horse of modern day microelectronics. Physical concepts such as mobility, charge carriers (electrons and holes), drift and diffusion, energy diagrams, p-n junctions etc. will be developed.
Afterwards, the fundamental circuit primitive of microelectronics, the inverter, will be introduced. Core concepts such as what dictates the speed and the energy dissipation in computation will developed based on the inverter. We will then discuss why the relentless miniaturization/scaling of transistors over the past five decades has been central to the information revolution–we will show how the scaling of the transistors made circuits more efficient in terms of both speed and energy/power dissipation based on simple analysis of the inverter. This discussion will constitute ∼20% of the course. The rest of the course will primarily devoted to two more topics, interconnects and memory technologies. We will discuss how scaling affects the interconnects (i.e., the wires that carry signal to different parts of the chip and to the outside world). In discussing memory, we will give an introduction to four dominant memory technologies, namely SRAM (static random access memmory), DRAM (dynamic random access memory), floating gate memory transistors (FLASH technology) and magnetic memory (hard disk drives). Time permitting, we may also discuss reliability aspects, thermal aspects, and emerging technologies (such as quantum computing, spintronic devices and low dimensional materials).
The physics of computing as we will discuss in this course imposes limitations on what real computers can and can’t do–for example, how fast they can operate, how energy efficient they can be, how reliable they are. As we discuss the three main modules, we will introduce three such limitations, popularly referred to as the power wall, the thermal wall and the memory wall.
Furthermore, as logic and memory devices have approached 10 nm scale, physical scaling/miniaturization has slowed down and will eventually stop putting an end to the classical Moore’s law era. How that affects the overall paradigm of computing will also be discussed in this course.
