Suman Datta
Georgia Institute of Technology
Plenty of Room at the Top and Bottom
Advances in the theory of semiconductors in the 1930s and the purification of germanium and silicon crystals in the 1940s enabled the point-contact junction transistor in 1947 and initiated the era of semiconductor electronics. Gordon Moore postulated that the number of components in an integrated circuit would double every one to two years with associated reduction in cost per transistor. Transistor density doubling through “scaling” with each new process node continues today, albeit at a slower pace. Scaling resulted in exponential gain in performance and energy efficiency of integrated circuits that has transformed computing from main-frames to personal computers, from mobile computing to cloud computing. Innovations in new materials, transistor structures, cryogenic operation and lithographic techniques will enable transistor scaling. Monolithic 3D integration and polylithic chiplet stacking will result in more components on the top of transistors, whereas backside power delivery and power conversion technologies will enable use of silicon estate below the transistors. Together, these technologies will lead to continued advances in performance and energy efficiency of future microsystems.
Suman Datta is the Joseph M Pettit Chair Professor of Advanced Computing and Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) Eminent Scholar in the School of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech. Prior to that, he was the Stinson Chair Professor of Nanotechnology in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Notre Dame, and Professor of Electrical Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University. From 1999 till 2007, he was in the Advanced Transistor Group at Intel Corporation, Hillsboro, where he led device R&D effort for several generations of high-performance logic transistors such as high-k/metal gate, Tri-gate and non-silicon channel CMOS technologies. His research group focuses on electronic devices that enable new compute models such as in-memory compute, cognitive compute, cryogenic compute etc. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). He has published over 400 journal and refereed conference papers and holds 187 patents related to semiconductor devices.Suman Datta is the Joseph M Pettit Chair Professor of Advanced Computing and Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) Eminent Scholar in the School of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech. Prior to that, he was the Stinson Chair Professor of Nanotechnology in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Notre Dame, and Professor of Electrical Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University. From 1999 till 2007, he was in the Advanced Transistor Group at Intel Corporation, Hillsboro, where he led device R&D effort for several generations of high-performance logic transistors such as high-k/metal gate, Tri-gate and non-silicon channel CMOS technologies. His research group focuses on electronic devices that enable new compute models such as in-memory compute, cognitive compute, cryogenic compute etc. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). He has published over 400 journal and refereed conference papers and holds 187 patents related to semiconductor devices.