Postdoctoral researcher Dr. Jorge Marín and students Vicente Osorio and Alfonso Cortés, led by research associate Dr. Christian Rojas, all working in the Renewable Energies and Power Conversion line, won the IEEE SSCS “Code-a-Chip” integrated circuit competition, organized by the IEEE Solid-State Circuit Society (SSCS). The competition was launched to encourage the design of reproducible chips and allow emerging talent to attend conferences and interact with leading members of the chip design community.

The team won the competition together with designs from University of Toronto and South Korea’s Hanyang University. In total, 14 projects were submitted.

The AC3E team’s projects involved a new method for automating the design of integrated power electronics circuits, as well as the graphics describing its operation. Under the project, one provides the electrical specifications and the database to manufacture the desired chip (spec-to-GDS) is automatically created.

Osorio represented the team at the Symposium on VLSI Technology and Circuits in Kyoto on June 11-16, where he presented the proposal. This is the second largest microelectronics conference in the world. It focuses on semiconductor technology and circuits and provides an opportunity to create synergies in areas such as process technology and system-on-chip. The conference’s theme this year was “Technologies and Circuits for a Sustainable Future.”