Flexibility-Aware System-on-Polymer (SoP): Concept to Prototype

Ujjwal Gupta, Jaehyun Park, Hitesh Joshi, Umit Ogras

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Scopus citations

Abstract

Mechanically flexible, printed, and stretchable electronics are gaining momentum. While rapid advancement is well underway at the device and circuit levels, researchers have yet to envision the system design in a flexible form. This paper introduces the concept of System-on-Polymer (SoP) based on flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) to combine the advantages of flexible electronics and traditional silicon technology. First, we formally define flexibility as a new design metric in addition to existing power, performance, and area metrics. Then, we present a novel optimization approach to place rigid components onto a flexible substrate while minimizing the loss in flexibility. We show that the optimal placement leads to as much as 5.7 × enhancement in flexibility compared to a naïve placement. We confirm the accuracy of our models and optimization framework using a finite element method (FEM) simulator. Finally, we demonstrate the SoP concept using a concrete hardware prototype, and discuss the major challenges in the architecture and design of SoPs.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number7778244
Pages (from-to)36-49
Number of pages14
JournalIEEE Transactions on Multi-Scale Computing Systems
Volume3
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2017

Keywords

  • Flexible hybrid electronics
  • optimization
  • placement

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Control and Systems Engineering
  • Information Systems
  • Hardware and Architecture

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