Prof. Jong-Hyeok Yoon receives the “Best Regular Paper Award” at IEEE CICC 2021

Professor Jong-Hyeok Yoon from the Department of Information & Communication Engineering, DGIST received the “Best Regular Paper Award” at the IEEE 2021 CICC (Custom Integrated Circuits Conference), one of the top three global semiconductor societies. In addition, he was invited to submit a research paper in a special issue of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, the leading international academic journal in the semiconductor circuit design field that is recognized for publishing remarkable research outcomes.

The research was conducted jointly with the Georgia Institute of Technology and TSMC, and its outcome was related to an artificial intelligence(AI) processor based on Processing-In-Memory(PIM) that uses Resistive Random-Access Memory(RRAM), which is a next-generation memory. The developed processor is the world’s first PIM-based computing processor that is fabricated by applying the RRAM process of TSMC–a leading semiconductor foundry company; further, the process uses multi-bit RRAM.

The multi-bit RRAM can dramatically increase the memory capacity, enabling the implementation of a highly advanced AI system of the PIM processor. In this research, Prof. Yoon proposed a PIM structure and applied the structure to multi-bit RRAM, deviating from the existing single-bit RRAM-based PIM structure, which cannot be feasibly applied to multi-bit RRAM.

Professor Jong-Hyeok Yoon said, “I am quite delighted that the research I have been working on has received positive reviews.” He then added, “I will continue to focus on research in the PIM field, which is of great interest in South Korea, to produce more excellent results.”

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