Podcast EP305: On Overview of imec’s XTCO Program with Dr. Julien Ryckaert
Dan is joined by Dr. Julien Ryckaert who joined imec as a mixed-signal designer in 2000, specializing in RF transceivers, ultra-low power circuit techniques, and analog-to-digital converters. In 2010, he joined imec’s process technology division in charge of design enablement for 3DIC technology. Since 2013, he oversees imec’s design-technology co-optimization platform for advanced CMOS technology nodes. In 2018, he became program director focusing on scaling beyond the 3nm technology node and the 3D scaling extensions of CMOS. Today, he is vice president of logic and in charge of compute scaling.
Dan explores imec’s Cross-Technology Co-Optimization (XTCO) program with Julien. He explains that XTCO is a design/technology co-optimization program that focuses on optimization at the system level with a holistic approach that focuses on what matters most from the system perspective. Julien describes the system optimization problem today as a very challenging and diverse situation. It’s no longer mainframes or cell phones that drive technology but rather a very wide range of requirements presented by the ever-increasing size and scope of AI workloads.
In this broad and varied discussion, Julien describes the four primary drivers for XTCO as thermal, power management, compute density and memory subsystem capacity and performance. He describes how XTCO works with imec’s technology development initiatives and how imec works with the worldwide supply chain to implement new strategies, often based on new materials.
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