IEEE ISSCC 2024 Key Takeaways

Every year, the IEEE ISSCC (International Solid State Circuits Conference) presents the cutting edge of IC design. It covers all the relevant application areas. As expected, AI is driving not just the processor market itself but also the corresponding data center technologies. It is here where the growth of the models is now putting stress on the data communication: >30% of the time is spend on moving data instead of computation. This bottleneck is becoming more severe. This is the reason to aggressively drive the application of optical communication to replace the copper wiring. Not only for communicating to rack but also from board to board. The latest developments now also focus on on-board large radix optical switches. With this increased focus on photonics-based solutions, related fields such as EDA also need to make further steps, specifically in the co-simulation of electrical and photonic sub-systems.