UTEP's First Million-transistor Chip
Researchers at the University of Texas at El Paso in collaboration with a local engineering company (XL-Synergy, LLC) have created a one million transistor chip the size of a pencil eraser.
The chip mathematically detects problems in the power of household appliances in order to improve safety and prevent fault-induced fires.
XL-Synergy provided the computationally-intensive algorithm and the team at UTEP - which included a professor and 6 graduate students - designed and implemented the chip to perform the algorithm in real time.
The chip provided a platform for the team at UTEP to investigate new design techniques to improve the energy efficiency of computer chips. Furthermore, the project allowed the graduate students to get a taste of real industrial-strength chip design - similar to what they will experience at companies like Intel or IBM.
"The design of this chip demonstrates the high caliber of our engineering program and what UTEP is capable of ", said Ernie Martinez, a graduate student whose role was implementing the chip.
The chip was fabricated in Taiwan using 0.25 micron CMOS technology and contained over a million transistors - each of which is 200 times thinner than a human hair.
Although the chip was fabricated in Taiwan, UTEP is currently planning a clean room facility on campus that will be capable of similar fabrication.
XL Synergy Team
David Nemir
Jan Beck
UTEP Team
Eric MacDonald - Professor
Ernie Martinez - grad student
Jaime Gutierrez - grad student
Sergio Velazquez - grad student
Fernando Martinez - grad student
Raghu Papily - grad student
Ryan Price - undergrad student