Abstract
Optical Networks on Chip (ONoCs) are a promising technology to resolve some challenges which are increasingly plaguing traditional electrical NoCs. Excessive power consumption is chief among these issues. As researchers started looking into architectural options for ONoCs, it soon became apparent that Electronic Design Automation (EDA) would be very beneficial to improve such architectures and especially their physical implementation, e.g. due to the complexity involved. This is true already on a netlist level, but even more so once physical design is considered. Thus, since more than 15 years, researchers have started working on EDA approaches for the design of ONoCs.
I will review some of our research on EDA for ONoCs, with an emphasis on Wavelength-Routed ONoCs (WRONoCs). I will present three approaches at design synthesis targeting insertion loss minimization. A very efficient method for crosstalk computation will be introduced. Bandwidth maximization and allocation will be discussed as well as approaches to address process and thermal variation. Performance simulation for WRONoC-in-a-system will be presented. The talk concludes with the proposal of a complete EDA toolchain for WRONoC.
Biography
Ulf Schlichtmann holds a doctorate in electrical engineering from Technical University of Munich (TUM), as well as a technology business degree. He spent about 10 years in the semiconductor industry (Siemens, Infineon) in various engineering, management and executive positions, working on design automation, design libraries, IP reuse, and product development.
In 2003, he joined TUM as professor and head of the Chair of Electronic Design Automation. From 2007-2013 he served as Dean and Vice Dean of TUM’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). Since 2016, Ulf is an elected member of TUM’s Academic Senate, serving as vice chair since 2022, as well as the TUM Board of Trustees.
He is a member of the German National Academy of Science and Engineering, and a board member of Germany’s edacentrum. Ulf serves on various private and public advisory boards. Since 2021, he also serves as CEO of TUM’s Singapore research center, TUMCREATE.
Ulf’s current research interests include computer-aided design of electronic circuits and systems, with an emphasis on designing reliable and robust systems. His research especially addresses emerging technologies, such as microfluidic biochips, photonic interconnects, optical computing, and memristor-based neural network accelerators.
(This is one of the research talks delivered at Next Generation EDA Workshop, organised by CEDAR on 26 October 2026.)
