Nano Structures within System-on-Chip (SoC) Design
Paradigm
Professor Kamran Eshraghian
Dr-Ing e.h., PhD., MEngSc., BTech., FIEAust., CPEng
President and CTO
Innovation Labs Pty Ltd
and
Visiting Professor Chungbuk National University
Western Australia.
Abstract
To gain an economic advantage in the last decade many organizations have invested
billions of dollars in research and development programs that span over a range of
activities from implantable smart pills for image sensing and monitoring, smart drug
delivery for targeted therapy, pharmaceutical components, through to more futuristic
products based on metamaterials.
The need for intelligent components has become evident and integrated intelligent
circuits and systems based upon horizontal integration of radically differing
technologies have been clearly identified as the driving force for future-generation of
products. For example, a nanophotonic clinic based on SoC technology can be created
using multifunctional nanoparticles in which therapeutic or monitoring agents are
encapsulated and activated or monitored with either electromagnetic or light waves. An
encapsulated drug can then be photo activated locally thus initiating the process of
treatment providing new opportunities in medical diagnosis and related treatment. The
approach creates new possibilities for a variety of applications such as i-Health Care
and i-Aged Care environments.
Embedded nano-based biophotonic sensors, for example that could be powered and
monitored remotely to observe a wide range of physiological conditions such as pulse
rate, blood sugar, blood oxygen, blood pressure, status of internal tissues etc., would
provide important enabling capabilities for robotic microsurgery. The likely integration
of bio-devices with non-biological material results in Hybrid-SoC that provides higher
performance in applications as biomolecular motors for targeted drag delivery and biMEMS as analyte detector system with recognition capability of antigen-antibody. The
ability to transmit and receive data efficiently will be a major challenge – as the
consequence the “first centimeter” communication as part of the over-all “Triple F”
strategy brings about new opportunities in health care and aged care environments.
Such progress supported by bio-based technologies provide the foundation for a future
in which information sensing, embedded processing, imaging and multi-level
communication become pervasive.
The presentation will highlight the likely trend for future research and possible outcome
that could emerge as the result of this new direction in nano science embedded with the
System-on-Chip systems.
Kamran ESHRAGHIAN received his PhD MEngSc and BTech degrees from the
University of Adelaide, South Australia. He was subsequently awarded Dr-Ing e.h. from
University of Ulm Germany in 2004. He is best known in the international arena as the
“father” of CMOS VLSI design influencing two generation of VLSI designers. In 1979
he joined the Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering at the University of
Adelaide after spending 10 years with Philips Research both in Europe and Australia.
In 1987 he founded and was appointed as the Director of the Centre for Gallium
Arsenide VLSI Technology at the University of Adelaide. In July 1994 he was invited
to take up the Foundation Chair of Computer, Electronics and Communication
Engineering, and became the Distinguished University Professor in Western Australia.
He was subsequently appointed as the Director of Electron Science Research Institute.
He has held a number of visiting academic posts in United States and Europe. He has
co-authored 6 textbooks and served as the editor of the Silicon Systems Engineering
series by Prentice Hall. Currently he is the President of iLabs and serves as the chairman
of board of directors of several Hi-Tech companies.