C.P. Ravikumar

A thesis is a documentation of the efforts a student has spent towards a project for an extended period of time: anywhere from six months to six years. All BTech curricula have a six-month or one-year project work culminating in a thesis. MTech programs require a six-month effort towards the thesis. An MSc (Engineering) thesis requires anywhere fro...

This is the first chapter in the book "Multicore Embedded Systems" and it focuses on architectural considerations in the design of a high-performance multicore embedded system. These architectural considerations mainly include the type and granularity of the processor and the interconnection networks. The chapter brings out the benefits of a multic...

Today's SoCs are complex designs with multiple embedded processors, memory subsystems, and application specific peripherals. The memory architecture of embedded SoCs strongly influences the power and performance of the entire system. Further, the memory subsystem constitutes a major part (typically up to 70%) of the silicon area for the curr...

In sub-70 nm technologies, leakage power becomes a significant component of the total power. Designers address this concern by extensive use of adaptive voltage scaling techniques to reduce dynamic as well as leakage power. Low-power scan test schemes that have evolved in the past primarily address dynamic power reduction, and are less effective in...

Ultra low-power devices are being developed for embedded applications in bio-medical electronics, wireless sensor networks, environment monitoring and protection, etc. The testing of these low-cost, low-power devices is a daunting task. Depending on the target application, there are stringent guidelines on the number of defective parts per million...

Statistics published by the All India Council for Engineering Education indicate that a significant number of seats in engineering colleges remain vacant. Uncertainty in finding employment is the main reason for this underutilization. The problem of improving the employability of engineering students has been the subject of many studies. The most c...

The number of institutions which offer engineering education has grown significantly in the last two decades. At the same time, the reality is that a significant number of engineering seats in colleges go vacant year after year. We are also witnessing increased absenteeism in classes and an increase in dropouts. The quality of education offered man...

This talk was presented as a keynote at the IEEE DISCOVER Conference organized by IEEE Mangalore section, India. The theme of the DISCOVER conference revolves around four very important technologies. Distributed Computing has seen wide-spread acceptance in the corporate world and continues to evolve to achieve higher scalability, reliability, secu...

Automotive Electronics and Industrial Electronics have emerged as two major markets for semiconductors. These sectors demand high quality, safety and reliability from the integrated circuits as well as the embedded software. In this talk, we will focus on the aspect of testing of ICs used in automotive applications. In addition to screening the par...

The magic wand of electronics technology has hitherto transformed both computing and communication, leaving a big impact on the way we work, the way we stay in touch with others, the way we do our banking or shopping. Transportation is going through a similar transformation. We have already become accustomed to applications that help us navigate wh...

In this paper, we use the idea of mutual testing to solve the problem of in-field testing. The SoC used in modern automotive and industrial electronics are complex and contain multiple instances of memories, processor cores, and analog and mixed-signal cores. Built-in Self-Test is commonly used to perform in-field testing of the ICs. In the propose...

Systems on chip used in automotive and industrial applications continue to grow in complexity, with many embedded processors, memories, and peripheral controllers. Since functional safety of ICs used in these applications is important, periodic in-field testing of the embedded blocks is a necessity. There is a huge number of possibilities for testi...

Scaling down of transistor sizes has made it possible to integrate billions of devices in the same chip, allowing us to build entire electronic systems into tiny “systems on chip” (SoC). For about four decades after the proclamation of Moore's law, device scaling resulted in improvements in area, performance as well as power. In the last two decade...

Worldwide rankng of sientists publshed by “AD Scientific Index” (Alper-Doger Scientific Index):

As part of BPM2023 conference conducted by Data Security Council of India, I moderated a panel on the topic of semiconductor security. These slides were used to provide a background for the panel discussion. Data security is a major concern in semiconductor design, manufacturing and test. Similarly, hardware security is a major concern in electroni...

As part of the "Future of Computing" session organized by the Department of Computer Science, IIT Jodhpur, in the Industry-Interaction meeting held in Bangalore on Nov 26, 2022, I was invited to make a presentation. My talk deals with the importance of power and thermal management in embedded computing devices. I spoke at "Edge AI" and the platform...

I organized a panel on the topic of "Talent Development in Test and Validation" at ITC India 2022, held in Bangalore. This was my presentation at the panel.

In all undergraduate programs related to electrical, electronics and computer engineering, a lab course on Digital Logic design is invariably included. The experiments in this lab class require the student to build combinational and sequential circuits using TTL integrated circuits such as gates and flip-flops. Some autonomous institutions have inc...

Due to the pandemic, changes that technologists had predicted have come into our world sooner than we expected. C-cube refers to Computing, Communications, and Control, and each of these fields has been revolutionized by semiconductors. Availability of low-power devices such as laptops and mobile phones made it possible for us to lead a reasonably...

This tutorial is primarily intended for young professionals in semiconductor industry, teachers, postgraduate students and senior undergraduate students who have interest/curiosity in the topic of test/validation. Often, students and faculty do not choose to work in test/validation due to lack of awareness of research possibilities in the domain. B...

Engineering technology is evolving rapidly in the Information Age, much faster than institutions of learning can upgrade their programs and syllabi. India has developed more engineering programs that dwell on mathematical analysis, theory, and an understanding of science rather than engineering technology programs that focus on the application of s...

This talk is an introduction to the topic of factory automation and attempts to outline the need for factory automation and what technologies are fueling the growth in this field. Electronics is at the core of modern-day factory automation. Availability of sensors, analog, and digital processors with integrated industrial communication peripherals...

Conference Tutorial: Verification, testing and validation have all become challenging as the end applications of semiconductors have changed and electronic systems have become more complex. Automotive electronics, industrial systems and the Internet of Things have grown into huge markets today. Functional safety is most important in automotive el...

Scaling device sizes as a way to reduce the cost of semiconductors is unlikely to be a path which semiconductor companies will follow, due to the roadblocks. According to semiconductor analysts, the costs of system design, verification and validation rise shaprly beyond 28nm, resulting in an increase in cost per transistor. As a result, optimizing...

Increasing amount of electronics is being embedded into automotives. We are witnessing the conversion of the automotive from a purely mechanical device to an electrical/electronic/mechanical device. Purely electrical and hybrid-electrical vehicles are replacing the gasoline/diesel-driven vehicles. A variety of driver assistance systems are already...

Through the deployment of technologies such as AI, smart meters, robotics, industrial communication, and 3-D printing, large industries are looking at improving their production efficiency. This is the overarching theme of Industry 4.0. In the post-COVID era, there are expectations that India should not only become self-reliant but also play a role...

Since the performance of bus interconnects does not scale with the number of processors connected to the bus, chip multiprocessors make use of on-chip networks that implement packet switching and virtual channel flow control to efficiently transport data. In this paper, we consider the test and fault-tolerance aspects of such a network-on-chip (NoC...

Automotive electronic systems are steadily evolving to offer better assistance to drivers and passengers of the car. From a hardware perspective, embedded processors and sensors have become increasingly faster and power-efficient to meet the demands of the automotive industry. It is estimated that the most modest car has at least 30 embedded electr...

IEEE CONECCT conference is during July 26-27. Pre-conference tutorials are on July 25.

Presentation slides used at the International Test Conference (2019) held in Bangalore.

NIRMITI-2019 is a two-week summer internship program being organized by IEEE CAS Bangalore Chapter in collaboration with IEEE Bangalore Section, DSU, and Texas Instruments. The event is at DSU campus in Bangalore (Koodlu Gate). Apply online before June, 2019.

WinTechCon-2019 is the second conference in the series and is entirely managed and organized by women technologists. The conference is being held under the aegis of IEEE CAS Bangalore Chapter and is being held in association with IEEE Bangalore Section. A number of semiconductor/systems/software companies are supporting the conference.

NIRMITI-2019 is a two-week internship program for students, being held in Bangalore in the month of July. It is being organized by IEEE CAS Bangalore Chapter, in association with IEEE Bangalore Section, Texas Instruments India, and Dayanand Sagar University.

In this talk, I will provide an overview of Computer Science Education in India. Until the 1980s, Computer Science did not exist as an independent discipline. Computers were not easily available. Fortran and assembly language dominated and C was just beginning to emerge. The emphasis was on information systems. Today, we have a plethora of programm...

Low-power processor nodes, sensors, low-power wireless communication, cloud and edge computing, data analytics, and machine learning, and artificial intelligence – a number of technologies are coming together to create a smart world. In this seminar, I will go over this story from the viewpoint of both the possibilities these technologies open up a...

Sensor networks are being increasingly used to monitor public or private infrastructure as well as industrial processes. Thousands of sensors distributed over a geographic area periodically take measurements and pass them to a central base-station which is equipped with data analytics capability or the ability to connect to a cloud service for data...

Sensor networks are being increasingly used to monitor public and private infrastructure as well as industrial processes. Thousands of sensors distributed over a geographical area periodically take measurements and pass them to a central base-station which is equipped with data analytics capability or the ability to connect to a cloud service for d...

In this presentation, I discuss the importance of addressing security issues of IoT at the hardware-level. I provide an example of the connectivity MCU from Texas Instruments and discuss some of the capabilities it provides to address the issue of security of IoT.

This invited presentation was made at a conference organized by Synopsys, India, in 2017. It provided a short summary about the opportunities for graduating engineering students in the VLSI Industry in India.

In this paper, we will look at the role of “Internet of Things” in the cities of the future. We are already witnessing major changes in many walks of city life. More and more people are getting used to concepts such as “working from home,” teleconferencing, online shopping, cab services such as Uber/OLA, payment through e-currency, to name a few. T...

With Moore’s law coming to an inevitable halt, it is apparent that further improvements in price/performance/power will only come through system-level optimizations. With government policies becoming friendly to entrepreneurs due to movements such as “Make in India,” it is all the more important to expose students to new opportunities in system des...

Each year, industries compete with one another to recruit the best talent from campuses across India. The number of students graduating with a bachelors’ or masters’ degree in engineering from India borders around a million/year. It is difficult to make blanket statements about industry’s expectations from the graduating engineering students due to...

Street lamps based on light-emitting diodes (LED) have become popular in the past decade because of their low power consumption and extended life-time in comparison to conventional lamps. For the same lumen requirement, an LED-based street lamp consumes lower energy and can provide longer life. However, there is an opportunity to improve the power...

This presentation was made at a special session on industrial practices in VLSI test organized as part of the VLSI Test Symposium 2016. The coauthors of this presentation were employees of Synopsys (India).

This is the first chapter in the book "Multicore Embedded Systems" which was published by CRC Press and was edited by George Karnaros. It was published in 2016. The present chapter reviews a number of multicore embedded processor architectures and presents a comparative analysis.

Massively parallel distributed memory multiprocessors (multicomputers) are increasingly being used in applications which demand high performance. These include real time applications in defence, robotics. Since massively parallel computers are also inherently less reliable due to the large number of components involved, it becomes essential to ensu...

e-Commerce and Data Mining are inseparable. But Data Mining is a costly affair. So parallelization becomes inevitable. Also the web logs to be mined for revenue enhancement are distributed in nature. That brings in the distributed data mining. Here we discuss the sequential discovery of association rules first. Then we go on to see how that could b...

Removing noise from audio recordings is a commonly encountered problem, especially with the recording functionality becoming available in inexpensive mobile gadgets. Often, due to power and price constraints, these gadgets must make use of low-cost embedded processors. The object of this paper is to explore the possibility of applying digital filte...

Innovation is essential to bring technologies to end users at affordable prices and acceptable power/performance levels. Easy availability of low-power and high-performance integrated circuits packed with more functionalities than ever before is inspiring innovators to explore novel applications or revisit known applications with a new outlook. Gam...

In order to efficiently implement the Internet of Things (IOT), we need power-efficient processors as well as analog/RF integrated circuits. Performance measures, such as the speed of the CPU or the communication time between two nodes, are critically important when the IOT is used in a real-time application. Cost is an important consideration in a...

User interfaces are important from the view point of ergonomics and user-friendliness. In this paper, we describe a user interface for a music player that can be used by both normal users as well as those who may be visually challenged. We explain how a simple “search” option can be added to enhance the listening experience without significant addi...

User interfaces are important from the view point of ergonomics and user-friendliness. In this paper, we describe a user interface for a music player that can be used by both normal users as well as those who may be visually challenged. We explain how a simple "search" option can be added to enhance the listening experience without significant addi...

Embedded systems have pervaded all walks of our life. With the increasing importance of mobile embedded systems and flexible applications, considerable progress in research has been made for power management. Power constraints are increasingly becoming the critical component of the design specifications of these systems. It helps in pre-determining...

In order to efficiently implement the Internet of Things (IOT), we need power-efficient processors as well as analog/RF integrated circuits. Performance measures, such as the speed of the CPU or the communication time between two nodes, are critically important when the IOT is used in a real-time application. Cost is an important consideration in a...

Embedded Systems are found in every walk of life. We find them in buildings, farms, homes and cars. There are wearable systems that are embedded into shoes and clothing. There is medical electronic equipment implanted inside human bodies. An embedded system requires sensors to convert physical quantities such as sound, light, humidity or pressure i...

The Analog System Lab Manual describes experiments that can be carried out using the Analog System Lab Kit (ASLK). These experiments can be carried out on ASLK Starter or ASLK Pro kit. There are experiments related to the following analog sub-systems: Negative feedback amplifiers in both inverting and non inverting configuration Instrumentation a...

Table of Contents Editorial 1 Student Innovators explore System Design at TI India Analog Design Contest 2010 2 Help for visually challenged persons through e-compass and RFID technology 5 Tilt-Based Wheelchair Movement and Health Monitoring System for Quadriplegic Patients Life-Saving Low-Cost Integrated Wireless Health Monitoring System with Eme...

This issue contains articles related to innovative projects in the Embedded System space. There is also a quiz based on C2000 microcontroller.

We believe that there is a need to make a significant change to the way analog design is taught in engineering colleges today. The conventional way of starting with device physics and moving on to the design and analysis of analog circuits at the transistor-level needs rethinking. What is proposed is a two-tier approach to teaching analog design –...

The paper describes the importance of Industry-academia interaction in improving the quality of education in the Universities. We narrate our experiences in building relations between Texas Instruments and Indian Universities.

This paper presents a tool for teaching analog system design to undergraduate and postgraduate students. It is felt that analog system design should be taught first to students, before teaching transistor-level analog IC design. The paper presents the experiences of the authors in using the Analog System Lab Kit as a tool to teach analog sub-system...

Arterial disease, especially Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) is one of the leading causes of premature morbidity and mortality. During the flow, blood not only interacts with vessel wall mechanically but also chemically which modulates the plaque formation in blood vessel thus leading to coronary artery diseases. Here we propose to simulate a MEMS ba...

Editorial Ground breaking innovation: MSP430 based on Ferroelectric RAM Texas Instruments and National Semiconductor are now one company Experience EVALBOT – A Robotics Development Kit and more! Learn with UniTI! - Thinking in Decibels Clash of the Titans - 41 Colleges in the Fray! UniTI on Campus - Events in Q3, 2011 Feedback Amplifier

A technique for reducing the overhead of daisy chain test mode in divide-and-conquer testing using intermediate test modes that do not span all cores or all flip-flops in the core. The partial residual test mode spans across a subset of the cores and allows to bound the number of cores that a full residual test mode may span across. The interaction...

Table of contents Editorial Curriculum Design – You have to know the target! 2 How Technology helped us bring Gene Frantz to JNTU, Hyderabad LED Technology Based Low Cost Electronic Security Five-day Faculty Development Program on TI Microcontrollers Low-cost Safety Enhancements for Central Locking System in Vehicles UniTI on Campus - Events in Q1...

Table of Contents The curious case of the shrinking knapsack Position Location and Navigation Aid for Blind Solar Photovoltaic Emulator MSP430 vs. 8051: A Comparison of Microcontroller Architectures UniTI on Campus - Events in Q4, 2010 Analog is back - how do we help the teachers take it to the students? Chat with Professor Learn with UniTI Fee...

Includes papers presented at the VLSI Design and Test Symposium 2010, held in India.

Table of Contents: Editorial- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -1 Design and Development of a Low Cost Video Bronchoscope - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -...

The high test power consumption, which can be several factors higher than the functional power consumption for which an integrated circuit (IC) is designed, may result in higher overall cost due to yield loss and potentially damaged ICs. As system-on-chips (SOCs) designed in modular fashion are becoming increasingly common, the testing can, in cont...

From Editor Desk 1 Your Watch, Your Wireless Development Kit 2 UniTI Newsletter 4 Class-D Amplifiers for higher power efficiency 5 What we don't learn in schools & colleges 7 OMAP ZOOM 10 UniTI on Campus – Events in 4Q, 2009 11 Technology for Teachers – Part III 14 Feedback Amplifier 16 THE BIBLIOPHILE 17 UniTI Website 19 Maximum Power Point Tracki...

Editorial- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1 Wireless Fetal Health Monitoring System - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -...

Table of Contents ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Heart Beat Monitoring System How I launched my application with the Launchpad The Clash of the Titans - 2010 TI India Analog Design Contest Stop Thief! Remote Power Theft Monitoring System based on MSP430 Projection without wires — Removing the overhead of Overhead Projection Feedback Amplifier! UniTI on C...

The contents of this issue are: From the Editor's Desk 1 Batteries not included! 2 Designing Eco-friendly Products and Technologies – A Debate 4 A day at the Leadership University 6 Technology for the teachers – Part II 9 Light up the World – An enlightening meeting with Prof. Dave Irvine-Halliday 10 Feedback - Amplifier 11 The Clash of the Titans...

Includes papers presented at the VLSI Design and Test Symposium 2009, held in India.

UniTI Newsletter carries useful articles for University students and professors on topics related to embedded systems and analog design. Edited by C.P. Ravikumar

UniTI Newsletter carries useful articles for University students and professors on topics related to embedded systems and analog design. Edited by C.P. Ravikumar

The newsletter of the VLSI Society of India, edited by C.P. Ravikumar, carries reports of the activities of the society and several useful updates for the members.

The contents of this issue are: Editorial....................................................................................................................................... 2 Fifty Years of Semiconductor Innovation – Past, Present and Future........................................ 3-5 Encouraging Science and Technology in Schools..................

The high test power consumption, which can be several factors higher than the functional power consumption for which an integrated circuit (IC) is designed, may result in higher overall cost due to yield loss and potentially damaged ICs. As system-on-chips (SOCs) designed in modular fashion are becoming increasingly common, the testing can, in cont...

Debugging memory test failures in a system-on-chip design is becoming difficult due to the growing number and sizes of the embedded memories. Low-complexity marching tests, which are ideally suited for production testing, are insufficient for debug and diagnostics. On-chip support for multiple memory test algorithms can be prohibitively expensive....

This is the third issue in 2008 of the newsletter published by TI India University Program. Edited by C.P. Ravikumar

Includes papers presented at the VLSI Design and Test Symposium (2008) held in India.

UniTI Newsletter carries useful articles for University students and professors on topics related to embedded systems and analog design. Edited by C.P. Ravikumar

UniTI Newsletter carries useful articles for University students and professors on topics related to embedded systems and analog design. Edited by C.P. Ravikumar

Edited by C.P. Ravikumar, VSI Vision, the newsletter of the VLSI Society of India, carries reports of the activities of the society and updates for its members.

The inability to screen memory defects especially in newer technology with pre-programmed algorithms calls for ability to program newer algorithms on the fly on silicon. Such Built in Self Test strategy is known as Programmable BIST (PBIST). In this paper, we propose a way to improve the yield and reduce the DPPM of memory products by selecting the...

embedded system solution with complex System-on-Chip (SoC) to meet market expectations of high performance at a low cost and lower energy consumption. The memory architecture of the em- bedded system strongly influences crtical system design objectives like area, power and performance. Hence the embedded system designer performs a complete memory a...

Edited by C.P. Ravikumar, the newsletter of the VLSI Society of India carries reports of the activities of the society and useful updates for its members.

In sub-70 nm technologies, leakage power becomes a significant component of the total power. Designers address this concern by extensive use of adaptive voltage scaling techniques to reduce dynamic as well as leakage power. Low-power scan test schemes that have evolved in the past primarily address dynamic power reduction, and are less effective in...

Process variation is an increasingly dominant phenomenon affecting both power and performance in sub-100 nm technologies. Cost considerations often do not permit over-designing the power supply infrastructure for test mode, considering the worst-case scenario. Test application must not over-exercise the power supply grids, lest the tests will damag...