WiPLASH has gone beyond the state of the art in several areas. More specifically, we:
+ Laid down the multi-chip, wireless-enabled vision of massive heterogeneous architectures with system-level recofigurability that graphene antennas can provide. The vision goes beyond the state of the art in the field of wireless chip-scale networks, which considers single-chip architectures, lower frequencies, or unrealistic specifications at the antenna and transceiver.
+ Demonstrated the existence of tunable radiation from a variety of graphene-based terahertz antenna designs. This goes clearly beyond the state of the art in the field because graphene antennas have been explored theoretically, but never measured experimentally.
+ Achieved the integration of graphene RF devices into larger circuits and, eventually, into the transceiver sub-systems required to generate and modulate the signals that will be fed the antenna.
+ Studied the wireless channel at subTHz frequencies in realistic computer chip packages. These results suppose an advance with respect to the state of the art because existing channel models assume unpackaged chips or incorrect positioning of the antennas.
+ Advanced in the integration of in-memory computing (IMC) cores and wireless interconnects into full-system simulators that have been open sourced. Separately, those items may be modeled (partially) in specialized simulators, but have never been put together in the context of a full-system simulator. Therefore, WiPLASH progresses beyond existing approaches and enables the exploration of the architectural design space opened by the wireless technology, which was not possible to date.
+ Developed new wireless-enabled architectures capable of accelerating a variety of workloads. Other works have tried to build wireless-enabled architectures, but have generally not considered multiple chiplets, emerging technologies such as IMC, or AI workloads like we do in WiPLASH. Our publications already show that wireless-enabled architectures have the potential to achieve speedups beyond 5X without IMC and over 20X with IMC, both in general-purpose and domain-specific architectures.
The results of this project are expected to have a disruptive impact in the multi-billion-euro computer processor market, where Europe has traditionally been a secondary player. In this context, WiPLASH represents a window of opportunity to take the lead with a disruptive approach that marks a big departure from more conventional roadmaps and help ensure the independence and sovereignty of Europe in this field. Companies can be created not only focusing on the creation of adaptive AI processors for multiple application areas, but also exploiting any of the partial results of the project such as the creation of lightweight and versatile terahertz antennas or the design of high-speed compact transceivers. From the architectural standpoint, new versatile processor architectures can open the door to new solutions not only in AI processing, with relevant applications in neuroscience, drug discovery, or disease detection, but also in other fields such as BigData, genomics, finance, or the automotive industry.
