STMicroelectronics

About: STMicroelectronics is a company organization based out in Geneva, Switzerland. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Transistor & Signal. The organization has 17172 authors who have published 29543 publications receiving 300766 citations. The organization is also known as: SGS-Thomson & STM.

Lx: a technology platform for customizable VLIW embedded processing

Abstract: Lx is a scalable and customizable VLIW processor technology platform designed by Hewlett-Packard and STMicroelectronics that allows variations in instruction issue width, the number and capabilities of structures and the processor instruction set. For Lx we developed the architecture and software from the beginning to support both scalability (variable numbers of identical processing resources) and customizability (special purpose resources).In this paper we consider the following issues. When is customization or scaling beneficial? How can one determine the right degree of customization or scaling for a particular application domain? What architectural compromises were made in the Lx project to contain the complexity inherent in a customizable and scalable processor family?The experiments described in the paper show that specialization for an application domain is effective, yielding large gains in price/performance ratio. We also show how scaling machine resources scales performance, although not uniformly across all applications. Finally we show that customization on an application-by-application basis is today still very dangerous and much remains to be done for it to become a viable solution.

Electronic switching effect and phase-change transition in chalcogenide materials

Abstract: The threshold switching mechanism in amorphous chalcogenides is investigated, showing experimental data that once and for all demonstrate its electronic nature. The physical mechanisms responsible for the switching to the highly conductive state are discussed and the impact of cumulative read-out pulses is also investigated, showing that phase-change transitions induced by usual reading operations in phase-change memory cells are completely negligible.

Power efficient charge pump in deep submicron standard CMOS technology

Abstract: A power-efficient charge pump is proposed. The use of low-voltage transistors and of a simple two-phase clocking scheme permits the use of higher operating frequencies compared to conventional solutions, thus obtaining high current, high efficiency, and small area. Measurements show good results for frequencies around 100 MHz. Two test patterns have been fabricated, one with three stages and one with five stages, in a 1.8-V 0.18-/spl mu/m triple-well standard CMOS digital process (six metals). High-voltage capacitors have been implemented using metal to metal parasitic capacitance.

COGNITIVE RADIOS FOR DYNAMIC SPECTRUM ACCESS - Dynamic Frequency Hopping Communities for Efficient IEEE 802.22 Operation

Abstract: One of the key challenges of the emerging cognitive radio-based IEEE 802.22 wireless regional area networks (WRANs) is to address two apparently conflicting requirements: ensuring QoS satisfaction for WRAN services while providing reliable spectrum sensing for guaranteeing licensed user protection. To perform reliable sensing, in the basic operation mode on a single frequency band (non-hopping mode), one must allocate quiet times, that is, periodically interrupt data transmission that could impair the QoS of WRAN. This critical issue can be addressed by an alternative operation mode proposed in 802.22 called dynamic frequency hopping (DFH), where WRAN data transmission is performed in parallel with spectrum sensing without interruptions. DFH community, as described in this article, is a mechanism that coordinates multiple WRAN cells operating in the DFH mode, such that efficient frequency usage and reliable channel sensing are achieved. The key idea of DFH community is that neighboring WRAN cells form cooperating communities that coordinate their DFH operations

Silicon-on-Nothing (SON)-an innovative process for advanced CMOS

Abstract: A novel CMOS device architecture called silicon on nothing (SON) is proposed, which allows extremely thin (in the order of a few nanometers) buried dielectrics and silicon films to be fabricated with high resolution and uniformity guaranteed by epitaxial process. The SON process' allows the buried dielectric (which may be an oxide but also an-air gap) to be fabricated locally in dedicated parts of the chip, which may present advantages in terms of cost and facility of system-on-chip integration. The SON stack itself is physically confined to the under-gate-plus-spacer area of a device, thus enabling extremely shallow and highly doped extensions, while leaving the HDD (highly doped drain) junctions comfortably deep. Therefore, SON embodies the ideal device architecture taking the best elements from both bulk and SOI and getting rid of their drawbacks. According to simulation results, SON enable ables excellent Ion/Ioff trade-off, suppressed self-heating, low S/D series resistance, close to ideal subthreshold slope, and high immunity to SCE and DIBL down to ultimate device dimensions of 30 to 50 nm.