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April 17, 2023: Presented CEDA Distinguished Lecturer keynote presentation at the 2023 DATE conference in Antwerp, Belgium entitled: “Restoring the magic in design”.

Abstract: The emergence of “Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI)” in the late 1970’s created a groundswell of feverish innovation. Inspired by the vision laid out in Mead and Conway’s “Introduction to VLSI Design”, numerous researchers embarked on venues to unleash the capabilities offered by integrated circuit technology. The introduction of design rules, separating manufacturing from design, combined with an intermediate abstraction language (CIF) and a silicon brokerage service (MOSIS) gave access to silicon for a large population of eager designers. The magic however expanded way beyond these circuit enthusiasts and attracted a whole generation of software experts to help automate the design process, given rise to concepts such as layout generation, logic synthesis, and silicon compilation. It is hard to overestimate the impact that this revolution has had on information technology and society at large.

About fifty years later, Integrated Circuits are everywhere. Yet, the process of creating these amazing devices feels somewhat tired.  CMOS scaling, the engine behind the evolution in complexity over all these decades, is slowing down and will most likely peter out in about a decade. So has innovation in design tools and methodologies. As a consequence, the lure of IC design and design tool development has faded, causing a talent shortage worldwide. Yet, at the same time, this moment of transition offers a world of opportunity and excitement. Novel technologies and devices, integrated in three-dimensional artifacts are emerging and are opening the door for truly transformational applications such as brain-machine interfaces and swarms of nanobots. Machine learning, artificial intelligence, optical and quantum computing present novel models of computation surpassing the instruction-set processor paradigm. With this comes a need again to re-invent the design process, explicitly exploiting the capabilities offered by this next generation of computing sysyems. In summary, it is time to put the magic in design again.

December 1, 2022: My long-awaited monograph “Of Brains and Computers” (192 pages) has been published by Now Publishers.

Abstract: The human brain – which we consider to be the prototypal biological computer – in its current incarnation is the result of more than a billion years of evolution. Its main functions have always been to regulate the internal milieu and to help the organism/being to survive and reproduce. With growing complexity, the brain has adopted a number of design principles that serve to maximize its efficiency in performing a broad range of tasks. The physical computer, on the other hand, has had only 200 years or so to evolve, and its perceived purpose is considerably different and far more constrained – that is, to solve a set of mathematical functions. This picture is rapidly changing however. One may argue that the functions of brains and computers are converging. This transition comes at a critical time when the roadmap for physical computing is becoming murky after a long period of exponential growth. Hence the existential questions arise if the underlaying design principles may converge or cross-breed, or if the different mechanisms (physics versus biology) will always translate into radically different solutions.

Citation: Jan M. Rabaey (2022), "Of Brains and Computers", Foundations and Trends® in Integrated Circuits and Systems: Vol. 2: No. 1–2, pp 1-192. http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/3500000006