Recently the fourth industrial revolution has become main theme worldwide fueled by internet, IoT, cloud computing, big data, machine learning, and AI. The scope and the speed of this revolution are far beyond the three previous revolutions. In this talk we will briefly go over the history of these revolutions and discuss enabling technologies of the fourth industrial revolution, in particular nanoelectronics. In nanoelectronics resistive memories such as phase change memories, nanomechanical memories, magnetoresistive memories, and memristors have received much attention in recent years as the reliability of charge-based memories such as DRAMs become even more volatile with deep submicron technology scaling, and also for much denser on-chip implementation. Also the continuing demand for low power chips and systems calls for low energy signal transfers between memory and processing blocks, and thus the so-called processing-in-memory. Neuro-computing is also much related to the future of machine learning and AI, especially in mimicking how human brain functions. Interesting relevant aspects of memristors will be explained in this talk, along with challenging research and engineering issues.
Sung-Mo “Steve” Kang is SOE Distinguished Chair Professor of the Jack Baskin School of Engineering, UC Santa Cruz. He was the 15th President of KAIST from February 23, 2013 to February 22, 2017 and the 2nd Chancellor of the University of California, Merced from March 1, 2007 to June 30, 2011. From January 1, 2001 to February 28, 2007 he was the 2nd Dean of the Baskin School of Engineering and Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He was Head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) from August 1995 to December 2000. Prior to UIUC he was Supervisor of High-End Microprocessor Design at AT&T Bell Laboratories at Murray Hill and also had served as a faculty member of Rutgers University. He was a Visiting Professor at EPFL, Switzerland (1989, 2006, and 2012), KAIST (2002), Technical University of Munich (1998), and the University of Karlsruhe (1997). He has advised nearly 60 Ph.D. students for their completion, published over 450 papers in premier journals and conferences, and was granted 16 patents. He has served as President of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (1991) and the Silicon Valley Engineering Council (2002-2003), Founding Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems (1992-1994). His awards include Fairleigh Dickinson University Society of Pinnacle Award (2013), KAST Deok Myeong Engineering Award (2010), Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame Induction (2009), Korean-American Leadership Award (2008), ISQED Quality Award (2008), Chang-Lin Tien Leadership Award (2007), IEEE Mac Van Valkenburg CAS Society Award (2005), IEEE Millennium Medal (2000), SRC Technical Excellence Award (1999), KBS Award in Industrial Technology (1998), IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Technical Excellence Award (1997), Alexander von Humboldt Award for Senior US Scientists (1996), IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Technical Field Award (1996), IEEE Darlington Best Journal Paper Award (1993), other best paper awards, and Outstanding Alumni Award from the University of California, Berkeley (2001) and Distinguished Yonsei Alumni Award (2008). He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1975), M.S. from the State University of New York, Buffalo (1972), and B.S. from Fairleigh Dickinson University, Teaneck, NJ (1970), all in electrical engineering. He is a fellow of IEEE, ACM, AAAS, a member of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology (KAST), a foreign member of the National Academy of Engineering, Korea, and was a member of the California Council on Science and Technology.