Electronic design of intelligent devices

The scientific field of electronic design of intelligent devices encompasses the design and simulation of semiconductor and nanoelectronic devices as well as the design of intelligent electronic circuits.

The design and simulation of semiconductor devices is focused on applications centred on autonomous and mobile, energy-efficient devices, aiming at reducing power consumption and size, increasing their integration, and at the same time increasing their computational capacity. This area is focused in particular on two fields of work. Firstly, in the study of state-of-the-art transistors, predicting their evolution and technological limitations, and secondly in the development of remote power systems, solar cells and power converters. In these studies, proprietary numerical simulation tools and machine learning methodologies are used in order to obtain the best possible implementation in each field of application.

On the other hand, the design of intelligent circuits and systems aims to bring artificial intelligence to edge computing, i.e. to move decision making to the device itself, which is a promising alternative to the current approach based on massive data transfers and large computational resources. This distributed, low-power, context-aware computing paradigm requires specific small and very low-power electronic circuits capable of providing autonomy to systems with limited energy access in the framework of the Internet of Things (IoT), Industry 4.0 or implantable biomedical devices. In practice, our scope ranges from the design and testing of specific CMOS circuits to the implementation of algorithms on commercial embedded systems such as FPGAs and GPUs.