Chris Hyung-il Kim
Professor

  

Area of expertise: VLSI circuit design, non-silicon based computing

Education
Ph.D., EE, 2004, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States
M.S., BME, 2000, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
B.S., EE, 1998, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

Contact information
Office: 4-161 Keller Hall
Telephone: (612) 625-2346
E-mail: chriskim (at) umn.edu
Research Group Web Site: http://www.umn.edu/~chriskim/

Honors/Awards
2009 NSF CAREER Award
2008 McKnight Land-Grant Professorship Award
2008 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award
2008 DAC/ISSCC Student Design Contest Winner (advisor)
2008 Samsung Humantech Thesis Award (advisor)
2006-2008 IBM Faculty Partnership Award
2005 IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Outstanding Young Author Award2005 IEEE ISLPED International Low Power Design Contest Winner

Synopsis
My research focuses on the cooperative field of circuit/device and circuit/architecture design for high performance, low-power VLSI systems in the nanometer regime. By the year 2014, 5-10 billion transistors with 10-13 nm physical gate lengths will be integrated on a 500-700 mm2 chip using a high-volume manufacturing process. Scaling of silicon MOS transistors in the nanometer dimension will continue to trouble designers with issues such as leakage power, statistical variability, power delivery, interconnect, reliability, testing, quantum effects, etc. Yet unknown problems will arise as researchers seek for solutions to continue the historical rate of progress. Numerous research opportunities at all levels of design (circuit, device, architecture, software, system, CAD, assembly, etc.) will offer innovative solutions to extend Moore’s law beyond the year 2015.

Selected publications
T. Kim, J. Liu, J. Keane, and C.H. Kim, "A High-Density Subthreshold SRAM with Data-Independent Bitline Leakage and Virtual Ground Replica Scheme," International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Feb. 2007.

J. Gu, H. Eom, and C.H. Kim, "A Switched Decoupling Capacitor Circuit for On-Chip Supply Resonance Damping," VLSI Circuits Symposium, June 2007.

J. Keane, S. Venketraman, P.Butzen, C.H. Kim, "An Array-based Test Circuits for Fully Automated Dielectric Breakdown Characterization," Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), Sept. 2008.

T. Kim, R. Persaud, and C.H. Kim, "Silicon Odometer: An On-Chip Reliability Monitor for Measuring Frequency Degradation of Digital Circuits," VLSI Circuits Symposium (invited to JSSC, DAC/ISSCC design contest winner), June 2007.