Engineering Professors Awarded $2 Million NSF Grant to Design Energy-Efficient Chiplets for Greener Data Centers

The National Science Foundation Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering has awarded Yarui Peng, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, a $2 million Type II grant through the Design for Environmental Sustainability in Computing (DESC) program. 

This four-year award will support the CHIPLETS360 project led by Yarui Peng and his Energy-Efficient Electronics and Design Automation (E3DA) Lab. Peng is leading this project in collaboration with Jia Di,  head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the U of A; Alex K. Jones, chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Syracuse University; Bryan S. Kim, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Syracuse University; and Yan Solihin, professor of computer science at the University of Central Florida.

"Data centers have become a significant source of carbon emissions, with projected energy consumption reaching 10% globally in the next decade. This has raised concerns about the greenhouse gas resulting from powering these data centers," Peng said. "Considerable effort is being expended to enhance energy efficiency and sustainability in data centers with renewable energy, smart scheduling and peak shaving. Enabling energy and resource-efficient computing with chiplets remains an ongoing and challenging problem."

The CHIPLETS360 project aims to revolutionize the design of sustainable computing systems for data centers through novel chiplet and 2.5D integration practices. 2.5D integration connects multiple chips on a shared base while 3D integration stacks them, improving performance and energy efficiency.  

CHIPLETS360 explores new computing approaches enabled through advanced packaging, such as agile hardware design and heterogeneous integration. This project studies algorithms and develops tools to match workloads seamlessly to various technologies and heterogeneous chiplets in the same package.

CHIPLETS360 takes a full stack approach by modeling environmental costs and integrating critical components previously ignored in sustainability tools, such as power electronics and asynchronous circuits. 

The team is excited to receive funding for the study, titled, "DESC: Type II: CHIPLETS360: Datacenter Optimization Through Whole-stack Novel Accounting, Design, Reuse, and Heterogeneous Provisioning of CHIPLETS," to combine advanced packaging with electronic design automation, architecture, circuit and system design, thereby maintaining design agility and energy efficiency while reducing the carbon footprint in data centers to support next-generation AI, high-performance computing and cloud applications.