The ECE Ph.D. candidate was one of 10 people to receive the grant. The design aims to reduce energy consumption when performing power-intensive processes, like AI computing.
Georgia Institute of Technology School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Ph.D. candidate Jungyoun Kwak received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) Pre-doctoral Grant for his groundbreaking research titled, "Monolithic 3D Transposable 3T Embedded DRAM with Back-end-of-line Oxide Channel Transistor," at the 2024 IEEE ISCAS.
The paper introduces an innovative design for a high-density, power-efficient 3T embedded dynamic random-access memory (eDRAM) with the back-end-of-line (BEOL) compatible tungsten-doped indium oxide (IWO) channel transistor. This novel architecture incorporates both near-memory computing (NMC) and in-memory computing (IMC) capabilities within a single array.
The proposed 3T IWO eDRAM offers remarkable advantages, including significantly reducing the area needed for in-memory computing. This is achieved through condensed design and leveraging monolithic 3D integration.
IWO channel transistors also substantially improve data retention compared to traditional solutions due to low sub-threshold leakage, making it an excellent candidate for last-level cache and parallel computing in next-generation computing systems. This will allow for a reduction in energy consumption, while performing data-intensive processes, such as artificial intelligence (AI) computing.
The research is supported by the Center for Heterogeneous Integration of Micro Electronic Systems (CHIMES) and Center for Processing with Intelligent Storage and Memory (PRISM), operating under the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC)'s Joint University Microelectronics Program 2.0 (JUMP 2.0), in collaboration with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The grant is awarded to 10 Ph.D. candidates, facilitating the mobility for them to conduct interdisciplinary research at another research department. The recognition of Kwak’s research also further acknowledges the potential of monolithic 3D integration to extend Moore's Law and address the ever-increasing computational demands of emerging technologies like AI.
Kwak is a member of ECE Professor Shimeng Yu's Laboratory for Emerging Devices and Circuits.
The research group's primary focus is to overcome the limitations of conventional 2D scaling in integrated circuits by vertically stacking circuit components using emerging devices in 3D monolithic integration.