Kandou Codes for Chip-to-Chip Communication

Dr. Amin Shokrollahi
Founder and CEO of Kandou Bus
Given on: Feb. 4th, 2014
Time: 4:15pm to 5:15pm
Venue: Hewlett 102

Abstract

Modern electronic devices consist of a multitude of IC components: the processor, the memory, the RF modem and the baseband chip (in wireless devices), and the graphics processor, are only some examples of components scattered throughout a device. The increase of the volume of digital data that needs to be accessed and processed by such devices calls for ever faster communication between these IC's. Faster communication, however, often translates to higher susceptibility to various types of noise, and inevitably to a higher power consumption in order to combat the noise. This increase in power consumption is, for the most part, far from linear. In this talk I will give a short overview of problems encountered in chip-to-chip communication, and will advocate the use of novel coding techniques to solve those problems. I will talk about the new coding qpproach developed by Kandou Bus, its theoretical and practical implications, and products based on these techniques.

Biography

Dr. Amin Shokrollahi finished his PhD at the University of Bonn in 1991. From 1991 to 1995 he was an assistant at the same university, before moving to the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley in 1995. In 1998 he joined the Bell Laboratories as a Member of the Technical Staff. In 2000 he joined the startup company Digital Fountain as their Chief Scientist, a position he had until Digital Fountain’s acquisition by Qualcomm in 2009. In 2003 he joined EPFL where he has the chairs of Algorithmic Mathematics in the Math department, and algorithmics in the Computer Science department. In 2011 he founded the company Kandou Bus (http:www.kandou.com) which uses novel approaches from discrete mathematics, algorithm design, and electronics to design fast and energy efficient chip-to-chip communication links.

Amin’s research interests are varied and cover coding theory, discrete mathematics, algorithm design, theoretical computer science, signal processing, networking, computational algebra, algebraic complexity theory, and most recently, electronics, areas where he has several books, more than 100 publications, and more than 100 pending and granted patent applications. An IEEE Fellow, Amin’s honors include the IEEE Information Theory Society Information Theory Paper Award (2002), the joint IT/ComSoc Best Paper Award (2008), the IEEE Eric E. Sumner Communications Theory Award (2007), the IEEE Hamming Medal (2012), and the prestigious Euro 2 million Advanced Research Grant of the European Research Council.