Decadal Plan for Semiconductors: 2030 ICT research goals

Speaker: Dr. Victor Zhirnov

Semiconductor Research Corporation, 4819 Emperor Blvd, Durham, NC, USA

Abstract:

The current hardware-software paradigm in information and communication technologies (ICT) has reached its limits and must change. It is important to identify significant trends that are driving information technology and what roadblocks/challenges the industry is facing. A Decadal Plan for Semiconductors is currently being developed that will transform the semiconductor industry by:

• supporting the strategic visions of semiconductor companies
• guiding a (r)evolution of research programs
• placing ‘a stake in the ground’ to challenge the best and brightest university faculty and students

It is expected that the Decadal Plan will have a major impact on the semiconductor industry in the decade of the 2020s similar to the impact of the 1984 10-year SRC Research goals that eventually became International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS).

Currently information and communication technologies are facing four major ‘seismic shifts’:

1. Computing energy vs. global energy production
2. Global storage-communication cross-over
3. Dramatic global storage requirement increase
4. Analog data deluge

Dr. Zhirnov will discuss the current status and future directions for the development of new enabling technologies in view of these ICT seismic shifts.

Biography

Victor Zhirnov is Chief Scientist at the Semiconductor Research Corporation. His research interests include nanoelectronics devices and systems, properties of materials at the nanoscale, bio-inspired electronic systems etc. He has authored and co-authored over 100 technical papers and contributions to books. Victor Zhirnov served as the Chair of the Emerging Research Device (ERD) Working Group for the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS). Victor Zhirnov also holds adjunct faculty position at North Carolina State University and has served as an advisor to a number of government, industrial, and academic institutions. Victor Zhirnov received the M.S. in applied physics from the Ural Polytechnic Institute, Ekaterinburg, Russia, and the Ph.D. in solid state electronics and microelectronics from the Institute of Physics and Technology, Moscow, in 1989 and 1992, respectively. From 1992 to 1998 he was a senior scientist at the Institute of Crystallography of Russian Academy of Science in Moscow. From 1998 to 2004 he was research professor at North Carolina State University. He joined SRC in 2004.