Antonio Liscidini of University of Toronto

Technical talk by Professor Antonio Liscidini from University of Toronto, with the following abstract:

 In this talk, we’ll delve into some fundamental aspects of signal processing to understand how they will shape the future of IC mixed-signal design.

 In the first part of the lecture, we’ll compare power efficiency and technology evolution, discussing the dualism of analog/digital and voltage/time in terms of signal processing and dynamic range achievable.

 In the second part of the presentation, we’ll explore two examples of how analog mixed-signal can achieve the flexibility of digital signal processing while maintaining higher speed and power efficiency. We’ll present a novel topology of a MAC analog accelerator for digital computation in AI and a quantized analog TX for 5G wireless communication that exploits a power-scalable band-pass RF DAC. These solutions outperform the state of the art and suggest new directions for future development in mixed-signal computation and software-defined analog front-ends.

Biography:

Antonio Liscidini (Senior Member, IEEE) earned his Laurea (summa cum laude) and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Pavia, Italy, in 2002 and 2006, respectively. During his Ph.D., he served as a summer intern at National Semiconductors in Santa Clara, California, USA. From 2008 to 2012, he held the position of Assistant Professor at the University of Pavia and also worked as a consultant for Marvell Semiconductors.

In 2012, Prof. Liscidini relocated to the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, where he currently holds the position of Full Professor and Associate Chair of the Graduate Program. Throughout his career, he has been a consultant for several companies, including Huawei and Marvell Technology Group. His research interests are centred around analog mixed-signal interfaces, with a particular focus on the development of transceivers and frequency synthesizers for wireless-wireline communication and ultralow-power applications.

Dr. Liscidini received the Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE 2005 Symposium on VLSI Circuits and was a co-recipient of the Best Invited Paper Award at the 2011 IEEE CICC and the 2018 IEEE ESSCIRC. He currently serves as Associate Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems-Part II. Dr. Liscidini has also served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE TCAS2 Express Briefs, IEEE OJ-SSCS, and as a Guest Editor for the IEEE JSSC and IEEE RFIC VJ, IEEE Solid State Circuit Letters. He has been a member of many TPC for different conferences, including ISSCC, ESSCIRC, and CICC. Additionally, Dr. Liscidini was a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society from 2016 to 2018.

Address:Toronto, Ontario, Canada