Institute for Integrated Circuits
The Institute for Integrated Circuits provides expertise for all main steps in the design and realization of integrated circuits, embedded systems, as well as cyber-physical systems. This includes modeling of corresponding HW/SW systems in early stages of the design flow and their realization through all major abstraction levels such as the Electronic System Level (ESL), the Register Transfer Level (RTL), the gate level, and the technology mapping down to the physical/analog level. A particular focus represents the design of corresponding applications in the domain of analog and mixed-signal circuits (Internet of Things) and medical technology.
The Institute for Integrated Circuits is composed of the following departments:
Energy-Efficient Analog Circuits and Systems
The Department for Energy-Efficient Analog Circuits and Systems covers the design of analog and mixed-signal circuits and systems, with emphasis on low-power circuit techniques, radio-frequency integrated circuits, power-management and energy harvesting. Using our strong background in circuit and systems design for cellular communications we are exploring novel power amplifier technologies, 5G cellular communication, low-power wireless sensor networks and new approaches in energy harvesting and power management.We are also active in the area of electro-static discharge protection of circuits and systems which special consideration of electromagnetic interference. For students, we offer lectures for graduate and undergraduate students and supervise Bachelor as well as Master theses. In addition, PhD theses are offered for further studies.
Integrated Circuit and System Design
The Department for Integrated Circuit and System Design covers the development of design methods for various application areas. A particular focus of our work is on the design, verification, and test of circuits and systems for conventional as well as alternative and post-CMOS computing technologies. Besides that, we have proven to successfully apply the methods developed by us in complementary research areas. For students, we supervise Bachelor as well as Master theses. We believe in research-oriented learning.
News
- August, 2023: Our work on "Error mitigation enables PET radiomic cancer characterization on quantum computers"("https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-023-06362-6") has been published in the European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (EJNM).
- July, 2023: The results of Manuel Moser’s master thesis are presented at the 2023 Free Silicon Conference (FSiC2023) in Paris in a talk titled “Design of a 1.2MS/s Charge-Redistribution Non-Binary SAR-ADC Utilizing the SKY130 Open-Source Technology”.
- June, 2023: Harald Pretl is invited to the IHP Microelectronics Workshop on OpenPDK, and presents a talk titled “An Ultra-Low-Power High-Density Wireless Biomedical Sensing System, or How to Build Mixed-Signal SoC with Open-Source Tools”.
- June, 2023: Students of the lecture “Advanced Integrated Circuit Design” are invited by Infineon Technologies Linz to tour the RF and testing labs.
- June, 2023: Richard Kueng receives the prestigious FWF-START award for his project q-shadows. (see "https://scilog.fwf.ac.at/natur-technik/18185/eine-bruecke-zur-quantenwelt")
- May, 2023: Thomas Grurl is awarded the Best Student Paper Award at the International Conference on VLSI Design for his work on quantum error correction.
- May, 2023: Our works on
- "Optimized Density Matrix Representations" and
- "Towards an Automated Framework for Realizing Quantum Solutions"
- May, 2023: The newly established lecture 'Introduction to Computation Complexity' of Richard Kueng has been awarded with the Kepler Teaching Award in the category Teaching Innovation, see here for further details.
- May, 2023: We submitted a temperature sensor with digital-readout made purely with Verilog. The twisted use of a tristate-inverter allowed us to do this, and even made a voltage-mode digital-analog converter possible. The design details are discussed in this interview of Harald Pretl by Matt Venn, see "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skC292_dALM". The design is open-source and available at "https://github.com/iic-jku/tt03-tempsensor".
- April, 2023: The team mentored by Stefan Hillmich during the 11th NYUAD Hackathon is presented with the "Audience Choice Award" for their project on early detection of Alzheimer's disease.
- April, 2023: Lukas Burgholzer and Stefan Hillmich participate as mentors at the 11th NYUAD International Hackathon for Social Good focusing on Quantum Computing at the New York University in Abu Dhabi.
- April, 2023: Lukas Burgholzer participates in the first European Quantum System Software Summit (EQS3) in Raitenhaslach.
- April, 2023: We submitted a synthesizable digital temperature sensor design on Matt Venn’s TinyTapeout (see "https://tinyurl.com/56hv4j2a" and "https://github.com/iic-jku/tt03-tempsensor").
- April, 2023: Gerold Fink successfully defends his Ph.D. thesis titled "Simulation and Design Automation Tools for Microfluidic Devices" — Congratulations! Many thanks to the examination committee consisting of Prof. Oliver Keszöcze (FAU Erlangen), Prof. Daniel Große (JKU), Prof. Robert Wille (TUM), and headed by Prof. Joseph Küng (JKU).
- April, 2023: Silicon Austria Labs and JKU organise a talk by Prof. R. Bogdan Staszewski titled “Beyond All-Digital PLL for RF and Millimeter-Wave Frequency Synthesis”.
- April, 2023: Tim Schumacher successfully defends his Ph.D. thesis titled "Improving Receiver Design with Adiabatically Switched Translational Circuits“ — Congratulations! Many thanks to the examination committee consisting of Prof. Bogdan Staszewski (University College Dublin), Prof. Andreas Stelzer (JKU), Prof. Harald Pretl (JKU), and headed by Prof. Andreas Springer (JKU).
- April, 2023: IEEE Distinguished Lecturer Prof. Andrea Mazzanti gives a talk at JKU about "Breaking The Phase-Noise Barrier With Harmonic Oscillators In BiCMOS”.
- March, 2023: Harald Pretl visits the HTL Leonding and presents the open-source IC design movement and the IEEE PICO Chipathon.
- March, 2023: The national proposal quantA -- quantum science Austria has been selected as one of 5 prestigious FWF clusters of excellence and will receive 21 Million Euros over the next 5 years. Richard Kueng is one of the key researchers, see here for further information.
- March, 2023: Our paper "A 0.32-THz 6.6-dBm Single-Chain CW Transmitter Using On-Chip Antenna With 2.65% DC-to-THz Efficiency" has been accepted for publication at the IEEE RFIC 2023.
- March, 2023: Harald Pretl presents a plenary talk at the 2023 Argentine Conference on Electronics titled "Open-Source IC Design — Why You Should be Interested.”
- January, 2023: Our book chapter "Verification of Quantum Circuits" in the "Handbook of Computer Architecture" published by Springer is now available online.
- December, 2022: Our work on "SyReC Synthesizer: An MQT tool for synthesis of reversible circuits" has been published in the Software Impacts Journal.
- December, 2022: Our book chapter "Decision Diagrams for Quantum Computing" has been published by Springer.
- December, 2022: Richard Kueng is awarded the Kardinal Innitzer Prize for his Habilitation thesis, see this OÖN article for further information.
- November, 2022: Richard Kueng gives the first keynote tutorial at the IQFA13 conference in Paris (directly after Nobel Laureate Alain Aspect).
- November, 2022: Stefan Hillmich successfully completed his PhD thesis entitled "Efficient Implementation of Quantum Circuit Simulation with Decision Diagrams". Congratulations!
- October, 2022: Lukas Burgholzer gives a (virtual) talk on “Design Automation and Software Tools for Quantum Computing” in the ECE seminar at the University of Utah.
- September, 2022: Our work on Adaptive Compilation of Multi-Level Quantum Operations is presented at the IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE).
- September, 2022: Our paper about rigorous synergies between quantum computing and machine learning has been published in Science. A nontechnical summary can be found here.
- August, 2022: Our work on "Equivalence Checking of Quantum Circuits with the ZX-Calculus" has been published in the Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems (JETCAS).
- August, 2022: Our work on "Simulations Paths for Quantum Circuit Simulation with Decision Diagrams: What to Learn from Tensor Networks, and What Not" has been published in the IEEE Transactions on Computer Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems (TCAD).
- August, 2022: Our work on "Towards a SAT Encoding for Quantum Circuits: A Journey From Classical Circuits to Clifford Circuits and Beyond" is presented at the International Conference on Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing (SAT).
- August, 2022: Harald Pretl gives a talk at the Silicon Austria Labs Summer Open-Source BootCamp about 50 2-transistor circuits. You can watch the video here.
- July, 2022: Stefan Hillmich got awarded a DAC Young Fellow Best Video Award. Congratulations!
- July, 2022: Our works on "Handling Non-Unitaries in Quantum Circuit Equivalence Checking" and "Equivalence checking paradigms in quantum circuit design: A case study" are presented at the Design Automation Conference (DAC). Besides that, we are part of the Special Session presenting "The Basis of Design Tools for Quantum Computing: Arrays, Decision Diagrams, Tensor Networks, and ZX-Calculus" at this conference.
- July, 2022: Our work on "Reordering Decision Diagrams for Quantum Computing Is Harder Than You Might Think" is presented at the Conference on Reversible Computation (RC).
- July, 2022: Alwin Zulehner got awarded a Promotio sub auspiciis Praesidentis rei publicae (the highest possible distinction for a doctoral degree in Austria) for his PhD. Congratulations!
- June, 2022: Matthias Eberlein and Lukas Burgholzer are awarded the JKU Young Researchers' Award — Congratulations!
- June, 2022: Our joint work with Caltech and Google AI is featured in (German) articles of derstandard.at and krone.at.
- June, 2022: Tim Schumacher presents our paper titled „A Receiver with Adiabatic and Harmonically Enriched Double-Frequency N-Path Drive“ at the IEEE ISCAS 2022.
- June, 2022: Markus Stadelmayer successfully defends his Ph.D. thesis titled "Edge-Combining: A Tool from Low-Power to High-Performance“ — Congratulations! Many thanks to the examination committee consisting of Prof. Linus Maurer (Universität der Bundeswehr München), Prof. Andreas Stelzer (JKU), Prof. Harald Pretl (JKU), and headed by Prof. Andreas Springer (JKU).
- May, 2022: Christof Gindu’s project proposal (https://platform.efabless.com/projects/923) has been selected in the IEEE SSCS Open-Source Chipathon (https://sscs.ieee.org/about/solid-state-circuits-directions/sscs-pico-design-contest) — Congratulations!
- April, 2022: We are invited to present our work on basic circuits using two transistors at the Spring MOS-AK Workshop (https://www.mos-ak.org/spring_2022).
- March, 2022: Our book chapter on "Thermal Sensor and Reference Circuits Based on a Time-Controlled Bias of pn-Junctions in FinFET Technology” is published in "Analog Circuits for Machine Learning, Current/Voltage/Temperature Sensors, and High-speed Communication”, Springer, 2022.
- March, 2022: The IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS, see https://sscs.ieee.org/about/solid-state-circuits-directions/sscs-pico-program) has established a Technical Committee for the Open-Source Ecosystem. Harald Pretl is an inaugural member of this TC.
- March, 2022: Our article "Fifty Nifty Variations of Two-Transistor Circuits: A tribute to the versatility of MOSFETs“ (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9523464) is featured in the IEEE SSCS Quarterly Highlights newsletter of the Editors-in-Chief.
- March 1, 2022: Prof. Wille moved to the Technical University of Munich. Further updates will be posted on his new webpage.
- February, 2022: A student team in one of our lectures is designing an integrated circuit using fully open-source tools in the SkyWater 130nm CMOS process.
- February, 2022: Robert Wille commented the current chip shortage and the problems in the supply chains of the semiconductor industry in an article by Chefinfo/WeekendMagazin (in German).
- February, 2022: Robert Wille has been appointed member of the Program Committee for the Workshop on Intelligent Methods for Test and Reliability (IMTR).
- February, 2022: Robert Wille was guest in the video series QuBites; episode Managing the Complexities of Quantum Computing.
- February, 2022: Robert Wille has been appointed member of the Program Committee for the IEEE International Conference on Quantum Software (QSW)
- January, 2022: The article "Efficient design of labs-on-a-chip: Design automation and simulation for microfluidics" covering our FFG Project "Advanced Production of Microfluidic Devices through Simulation Methods" has been published in The Project Repository Journal.
- January, 2022: The Munich Quantum Valley, where we are a part of, is kicked off.
- January, 2022: Our "10-year Retrospective Most Influential Paper Award" is covered in an article by Oberösterreichische Nachrichten.
- January, 2022: We released an update for our FCN design tool fiction (v0.4.0).
- January, 2022: Dominik Bonora successfully completed his Bachelor thesis entitled "SyReC Parser and Compiler". Congratulations!
- January, 2022: Robert Wille has been appointed Jury Member for the Grand Finals of the ACM Student Research Competition (SRC).
- January, 2022: Our works on are presented at the Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC).
- January, 2022: We received the "10-year Retrospective Most Influential Paper Award" from the Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC). More in the corresponding JKU news entry.
- January, 2020: Our book "Design Automation for Field-coupled Nanotechnologies" has been published by Springer.
- January, 2021: Robert Wille has been appointed member of the Program Committee for the International Conference on Computing Frontiers (CF)
- January, 2022: Robert Wille has been appointed member of the Program Committee for the International Workshop on Logic & Synthesis (IWLS).
- January, 2022: Our ERC Project "Design Automation for Quantum Computing" is featured in an article "Design tools for quantum computing" by the Open Access Government Magazine.
- December, 2021: We have sent our first mm-wave design at 300GHz in IHP Technologies 130nm BiCMOS technology for production.
- October, 2021: The IIC organizes the 2021 Austrochip Conference (https://iic.jku.at/austrochip) in Linz, Austria. The conference is opened by a keynote from Prof. Gerhard Kahmen, CEO IHP Microelectronics, and features a tutorial by Matthew Venn from YosysHQ.
- October, 2021: Daniel Schrögendorfer successfully defends his Ph.D. thesis titled "Linearity Analysis and Optimization of CMOS RF Amplifiers“—Congratulations! Many thanks to the examination committee consisting of Prof. Robert Weigel (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg), Prof. Timm Ostermann (JKU), Prof. Harald Pretl (JKU), and headed by Prof. Christian Diskus (JKU).
- July, 2021: Stefan Schmickl successfully defends his Ph.D. thesis titled „Design Methodology and Development of Battery-Less SoCs for Bio-Sensing“—Congratulations! Many thanks to the examination committee consisting of Prof. Alexander Kölpin (TU Hamburg), Prof. Andreas Stelzer (JKU), Prof. Harald Pretl (JKU), and headed by Prof. Andreas Springer (JKU).
- July, 2021: Matthias Eberlein successfully defends his Ph.D. thesis titled „Bipolar Structures for Thermal Sensor and Reference Circuits in Advanced CMOS“—Congratulations! Many thanks to the examination committee consisting of Prof. Bram Nauta (University of Twente), Prof. Bernhard Jakoby (JKU), Prof. Harald Pretl (JKU), and headed by Prof. Andreas Springer (JKU).
- July, 2021: Silvester Sadjina is awarded the JKU Young Researchers' Award—Congratulations!
- June, 2021: Patrick Fath presents his work on "An Energy-Detection Impulse-Radio UWB Receiver" at the "IEEE International New Circuits and Systems Conference (NEWCAS) " (online conference) in Toulon, France.
- May, 2021: Matthias Eberlein wins the Best Paper Award of the Sensory Systems Technical Committee for his manuscript “A Current-Mode Temperature Sensor with a ±1.56˚C Raw Error and Duty-Cycle Output in 16nm FinFET” at the “International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS)”.
- May, 2021: We present our works on
- “A Current-Mode Temperature Sensor with a ± 1.56˚C Raw Error and Duty-Cycle Output in 16nm FinFET” (Matthias Eberlein)
- “A Low-Power Edge-Combining Transmitter Using Quadrature Signals for FSK Modulation” (Markus Stadelmayer)
- April, 2021: Matthias Eberlein presents his work on " A Compact Thermal Sensor with Duty-Cycle Modulation on 1200 μm² in 7nm FinFET " at the "International Symposium on VLSI Design, Automation and Test (VLSI-DAT)" (online conference) in Hsinchu, Taiwan.
- March, 2021: Matthias Eberlein presents his work on " Thermal Sensor and Reference Circuits Based on a Time- Controlled Bias of pn-Junctions in FinFET Technology " at the " 29th Workshop on Advances in Analog Circuit Design (AACD)" (online conference) in Cork, Ireland.
- January, 2021: Markus Stadelmayer presents his work on “mmWave Current-Combining Quadrature Oscillator” at the “mmW Workshop” of the SAL-JKU Joint Lab.
- December, 2020: Daniel Schrögendorfer published the article “Analysis and Design of a Broadband Output Stage With Current-Reuse and a Low Insertion-Loss Bypass Mode for CMOS RF Front-End LNAs” in “IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers”.
- December, 2020: Stefan Schmickl published the article “Microwatt power management: challenges of on-chip energy harvesting” in “e & i Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik” (Online First).
- November, 2020: Markus Stadelmayer published the article “Low-power integrated transmitter design using frequency multiplication techniques” in “e & i Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik” (Online First).
- November, 2020: Stefan Schmickl presents his work on "An Untrimmed 14-bit Non-Binary SAR-ADC Using 0.37 fF-Capacitors in 180 nm for 1.1 µW at 4 kS/s" at the "2020 27th IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems (ICECS)" (online conference).
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October, 2020: We present our works on
- “350-nW Low-Noise Amplifier With Reduced Flicker-Noise for Bio-Signal Acquisition” (Stefan Schmickl)
- “A Design-for-Sensitivity Strategy for Charge-Pump-Based Receivers” (Tim Schumacher)
- “Recent Developments in Bandgap References for Nanometer CMOS Technologies” (Matthias Eberlein)
- “Edge-Combining for QPSK and FSK Modulation Using A Single Delay-Line” (Markus Stadelmayer)
- September, 2020: The article The Tech Behind The Mind Reading Pangolin Dress Could Lead To Wireless-and Batteryless-Exoskeleton Control about our work on wireless EEG/BCI sensors was published in "IEEE Spectrum".
- September 2020: We (Stefan Schmickl, Patrick Fath, Thomas Faseth, Harald Pretl) present our work on wireless EEG/BCI sensors at the Ars Electronica Festivals 2020 from 9. September to 13. September 2020.
- August, 2020: Tim Schumacher presents his work on “A 1.2-V, 1.8-GHz Low-Power PLL Using a Class-F VCO for Driving 900-MHz SRD Band SC-Circuits” at the “ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design” (online conference).
- June, 2020: Markus Stadelmayer presents his work on “A 1.2-V 180-nm CMOS Low-Power Multi-Band Ring Oscillator based Frequency Synthesizer for Edge-Combining Transmitters” at the “International New Circuits and Systems (NEWCAS)” (online conference) in Montreal, Canada.
- May, 2020: The article “Diese Kappe liest Gedanken” about our current research on ultra-low-power wireless SoC for medical applications like BCI was published in “Kepler Tribune” (2/2020).
- March, 2020: We present our open bachelor-thesis topics to ELIT and Mechatronics students at an information event at the institute
- February, 2020: Silvester Sadjina published the article “A Survey of Self-Interference in LTE-Advanced and 5G New Radio Wireless Transceivers” in IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques (Vol. 68, Nr. 3).
- February, 2020: Matthias Eberlein wins the “2020 IEEE Brokaw Award for Circuit Elegance” of the “Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS)”
- January, 2020: Silvester Sadjina successfully defends his Ph.D. thesis titled „Mixed-Signal Interference Mitigation in Cellular Receivers“—Congratulations! Thank you to the examination committee consisting of Prof. Robert Weigel (FAU), Prof. Mario Huemer (JKU), Prof. Harald Pretl (JKU), and headed by Prof. Andreas Springer (JKU).