Fine-Grain Parallel Cellular Processor Arrays in 3D Silicon Technologies

The topic of this proposal is the design of silicon microelectronic circuits that integrate thousands of simple processing cores on a single chip. In particular we will investigate circuits that integrate image sensing and image processing capabilities in a single device. These devices, sometimes called 'vision chips', perform processing using massively parallel cellular processor array architectures. High computational performance and low power consumption of such devices make them uniquely suitable for applications in embedded real-time computer vision applications such as autonomous robots, industrial machine vision, automotive security and driver assistance, interactive toys, visual prosthesis, etc. During the course of the proposed research we will develop novel vision chip circuits and architectures suitable for implementation in emerging microelectronic fabrication technologies, in particular, using 3D integrated (multi-layer stacked die) devices. We will verify our ideas via fabrication of integrated circuit prototypes and by demonstrating their computational capabilities in realistic applications.