Kicking off ISSCC 2018 with an opening day keynote

Delivering a keynote talk during the 12th February 2018 plenary session that formally opens the conference, De Salvo will note that the architecture will include human-brain inspired hardware coupled to new computing paradigms and algorithms that 'will allow for distributed intelligence over the whole IoT network, all-the-way down to ultra low power end-devices'.

“We are entering a new era where artificial-intelligence systems are... shaping the future world,” said De Salvo, who also is Leti’s Scientific Director. “With the end of Moore’s Law in sight, transformative approaches are needed to address the enduring power-efficiency issues of traditional computing architectures.”

Leti paper and demo present technology for ‘Extracting Energy from Shocks'
In addition, Leti scientists will present a paper on and a demonstration of real life applications of piezoelectric energy harvesting, which converts mechanical energy, such as vibration and shocks, into electrical energy. The demo at Demonstration Session 1, 8.8, from 5.00-7.00pm on 12th February, in Golden Gate Hall of the San Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel, will show a new technology for extracting energy from shocks.

The demo shows an energy-autonomous temperature sensor node powered by the proposed harvesting circuit in an automotive environment. The system is able to harvest enough energy to sense temperature and transmit it wirelessly with a few mechanical pulses.

The demonstration is based on the paper, 'A 30nA Quiescent 80nW-to-14mW Power-Range Shock-Optimised SECE-Based Piezoelectric Harvesting Interface with 420% Harvested-Energy Improvement”.

The paper will be presented at 11:15am on 13th February, during Session 8 on Wireless Power and Harvesting. The authors propose an efficient electrical interface to maximise the energy extraction from a piezoelectric energy harvester. The novelty of the approach is to adapt the strategy to sporadic mechanical shocks, usually found in real environments, instead of periodic vibrations.

The circuit allows a self-starting operation and energy-aware sequencing with nanowatt power consumption. Compared to a well-established interface, the proposed approach presents 4x energy harvesting capability.