Distinguised Lecture Series 2009-2010: Gilda Garreton

How Open Source and Collaboration aid Innovation in VLSI
Gilda Garreton, Sun Microsystems

Abstract
Using the example of Sun Microsystems Laboratories, this presentation shows how research in industrial labs often spans multiple research areas and encourages close collaboration between groups. The presentation will focus on one particular innovation that was made possible by a joint effort of hardware and software engineers, namely Proximity Communication, a novel low-power chip-to-chip communication method developed at Sun Microsystems Laboratories. Furthermore, the presentation will explain the research and circuit design flow process that lead to the development of functional test chips. It will also emphasize the relevance of an in-house open-source CAD tool as well as interactions with external partners.
The in-house open-source CAD tool is called Electric and it is a Java application used as a VLSI research framework at Sun and universities . Electric is in use at hundreds of sites around the world and has been used to produce thousands of integrated circuits.
In this technical talk, analysis and routing/placement tools in VLSI and the current effort to parallelize their algorithms will be described. To demonstrate the importance of multi-disciplinary collaboration while innovating, a three-dimensional viewer built in Electric will be discussed including its relevance as a teaching aid in VLSI courses.

Bio
Gilda Garreton is a senior staff engineer at Sun Microsystems Laboratories and her main research focuses on VLSI CAD algorithms. Since 2008, she is investigating alternative methods to multi-thread VLSI tools. Previous to Sun, Gilda researched on 2D/3D mesh generation algorithms suitable for device and process simulation. Gilda is an Open Source advocate and a Java/C++ developer. She received her B.A. and Engineering degree with honors from the Catholic University of Chile (PUC) and her Ph.D. from the Swiss Institute of Technology, Zurich (ETHZ). She joined Sun Microsystems Laboratories in 2004 and previously worked as a consultant at the Catholic University of Chile and as IT analyst/project manager at UBS, a Swiss bank in Zurich and Stamford, CT.
Gilda is a mentor at Sun and MentorNet and she co-founded in 2006 the community Latinas in Computing (LiC) whose main goal is to promote leadership and professional development among Latinas in the field. In 2009, Gilda and Latinas in Computing were honored by Caminos Pathways and the City of San Francisco for their diversity work. She has been served as GHCI Industrial advisory and scholarship board member multiple times. During her free time, she enjoys family time with her husband and two little boys and volunteer work. Apart from being member of technology committee and web master at her son’s primary school, she is a member of Engineers Without Borders US, affiliation Sun where she leads a project that would provide wireless access to a remote location in Panama.