Applications are invited for a PhD Research in low power embedded systems design in IMEC vzw, Belgium (http://www.imec.be), starting as soon as possible. An overview of the PhD program (requirements, funding, application forms..etc) is described in the following link:
http://www.imec.be/wwwinter/microsystems/phd/phd.shtml
Candidates with a background in computer engineering or computer science are preferred, but candidates with other backgrounds (electrical engineering with strong interest in embedded compiler optimizations and architectures) are also encouraged to apply.
Topic description:
The fast growing market for embedded devices has large implications on design and technology. Shorter time-to-market requires programmable platforms with sufficient tool-support. Inherent complexity of the application demands high performance throughputs from these platforms. Realistic peak performances are expected to be around 100-1000 GOPs. Additionally, the battery oriented and portable nature of these systems implies stringent power requirements for the platforms. Power consumption of these platforms running these applications is expected to be in the order of around 100-1000 mW. Rephrasing power and performance requirements, we see that the computational efficiency has to be around 1000 MOPS/mw, combined with high peak performances. In addition, as a consequence of technology scaling into the nano-dimensions, deep sub-micron effects cannot be contained at lower levels of system abstraction, but counter measures has to be taken at higher abstraction levels namely in processor architecture and compilers. Finally, with the growth of multimedia and wireless applications that are becoming more complex (dynamic, heterogeneous and memory dominated) mapping such applications onto processor architectures in an efficient manner is a non-trivial task.
