Researcher Sergi Abadal receives a Proof of Concept grant to study wireless communication in integrated computing environments
Professor and researcher Sergi Abadal Cavallé, from the UPC’s Department of Computer Architecture, has been awarded an ERC Proof of Concept grant to emulate wireless communication among chiplets inside a computing system.
Jul 23, 2024
The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded a Proof of Concept grant to researcher Sergi Abadal Cavallé, from the Department of Computer Architecture of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC), who is also affiliated with the Barcelona School of Telecommunications Engineering (ETSETB) and the Barcelona School of Informatics (FIB).
This €150,000 grant will help the researcher to bring the project “Emulation of Wireless Communication among Chiplets inside a Computing System (EWiC)” closer to market. The findings of this study could potentially revolutionise computer architecture in the future, as it proposes a radically different chip-to-chip communication method, paving the way for designing new, faster and more efficient computing systems.
This proof of concept project is associated with the ERC Starting Grant for the WINC project. According to Abadal, "in WINC, we have conducted research on the theoretical value of using antennas for wireless chip-to-chip communication. Thanks to the new Proof of Concept project, we will put this idea into practice and attempt to experimentally confirm the results that we have obtained in WINC. We hope this will bring the idea closer to market and attract the interest of the chip industry, which is currently undergoing rapid development".
The EWiC project will be co-led by Abhijit Das, a postdoctoral researcher from the Department of Computer Architecture.
The ERC has selected 100 projects for this call, including those of two researchers from UPC-affiliated research institutes: Gerasimos Konstantatos, from the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), with the “Heterogeneous Integrated Short-wave Infrared Colloidal Quantum Dot Lasers (IRQUAL)” project, and Samuel Sánchez, from the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), with the “Therapeutic Effect of Nanobots in the Treatment of Joint Diseases (OrthoBots)” project.
