Compute system architecture
Imec’s center of excellence for hardware-software-technology codesign for future compute systems, and pathfinding of optimized architectures for scalable systems in the chiplet era.
HPC and AI are disrupting every application sector – from personalized medicine through genomics to self-driving cars and intuitive human-machine interaction. The only constraint on continued innovation is the capacity of today’s compute systems.
Imec aims to solve these scaling issues by creating novel approaches to computing, connectivity, and architecture. We do this by leveraging our unique position in the R&D landscape, with expertise across the entire system and technology stack.
Read this in-depth article on how to address the scaling limitations of future computing systems
Towards post-exascale performance
Compute System Architecture (CSA) is imec’s center of excellence in enabling true hardware-software-technology codesign to architect HPC and AI systems of the future.
The goal of CSA is to develop energy-conscious, high-performance computing solutions at scale for the chiplet era. The team analyzes emerging usage models and architects compute systems capable of post-exascale performance.
CSA’s core expertise in system-level modelling, performance analysis and hardware validation enables system exploration encompassing the entire spectrum of workload complexity, modelling granularity and technology maturity.
Tailored services of CSA include early design space exploration for domain-specific system architectures in RISC-V and ARM based platforms. CSA offers efficient and effective insights through multi-fidelity performance modelling and analysis.
CSA’s collaborator base includes leading fabless companies, startups, SMEs, foundry partners, semiconductor tool vendors, and academic institutions. We also work closely with imec research labs on HPC/AI applications and innovative technologies towards future systems.
Click for more info on imec’s high-performance computing software lab.
Click for more info on our research into superconducting computing.
Collaborate with us for derisking and pathfinding of your compute system architecture
Leveraging its in-house expertise in scalable multi-fidelity modelling and performance analysis, imec’s CSA team helps you to perform design space exploration for your system at the architecture definition stage.
Due to imec’s close interaction with leading foundries, it grants you early knowledge on your system’s performance at different technology nodes.
Through a range of services that supplement your in-house capability, we ensure that all early performance questions at architecture definition level are explored and answered:
- system architecture definition – Design space exploration of heterogeneous multicore architectures for optimizing performance/TCO with functional validation and evaluation of design innovation.
- memory subsystem exploration – Investigation of novel, hybrid memory subsystems optimizing the performance of domain-specific hardware in the context of compute system architectures.
- virtual chiplet-based platform – System-level partitioning in a chiplet-based architecture and performance-power-area-cost trade-off analysis for optimized design of future compute systems.
- technology node selection – Evaluation of the impact of heterogeneous technology nodes for 3D/2.5D chiplet-based systems in package (SiPs) to facilitate the critical decisions in system level architecture.
Choose how you want to collaborate
We provide customized access to design space exploration for forward-looking domain-specific system architectures. You can pick a combination of flexible collaboration models:
- customer-driven system architecture exploration – We facilitate performance analysis and modelling to evaluate the system-level impact of your IP.
- domain-specific system architecture definition – We provide an early system architecture definition based on the your specifications and targeted workloads.
Unique team of global experts
Imec’s CSA team is a group of passionate researchers and engineers working on high-performance RISC-V- and ARM-based compute systems of the future. Our uniquely international team (over fifteen nationalities) comprises of multi-domain experts collaborating across imec offices in Belgium, UK, and USA.
Want to join us?
