The annual review for the Center for Ubiquitous Connectivity (CUbiC) was held on June 24-25. Researchers from 11 universities, industry, and government partners all gathered to discuss connectivity — from developing next-generation wireless connection to more efficient AI data centers.
Shih-Fu Chang, dean of Columbia Engineering, delivered opening remarks and praised the center for translating research into industry. CUbiC is partnered with 15 leading electronics and communications companies, including Samsung, Intel, and Boeing.
“I was on a trip to a few regions last week in Turkey, Thailand, and Taiwan. Everybody was talking about the topic you are addressing here today: How to advance AI, computing, communication, connectivity, bandwidth computing, but then also at the same time cut the demand on power,” Chang said.
Keren Bergman, the director of CUbiC, delivered the opening remarks on Wednesday, June 24. She started by talking about the “inflection point,” a period of time between 2018 and 2020 where AI skyrocketed in popularity. Since that time, AI companies and researchers have been demanding more memory and bandwidth to train their models. CUbiC researchers are working to offer that memory and bandwidth by improving connectivity.
“We want to increase the connectivity and communication bandwidth, but reduce the energy consumption,” said Bergman, a Charles Batchelor Professor of Electrical Engineering at Columbia Engineering.
CUbiC is uniquely positioned to address connectivity issues because of its remit to research the entire communication systems. Bergman highlighted this in her opening remarks as well.
“We are developing technologies, we are developing circuits and subsystems,” she said. “But the ability to look at the algorithms, the reconfigurability, and the adaptability of the system as a whole allows us to leapfrog these solutions.”
Looking ahead
At the annual review, representatives from CUbiC partner agencies presented their updates and priorities for the final year of the center.
Ali Niknejad, the associate director of CUbiC from UC Berkley, delivered a presentation about new results coming out of CUbiC, including AI-assisted models that can accurately predict signal power. He also presented a promising development in getting signals through obstacles, like buildings.
“You use your side lobes to discover alternate communication paths, and do that in the background, and if you get your line of sight blockage, you can automatically switch to a new path,” Niknejad said.
In his presentation, Carl Naylor, executive director of JUMP 2.0, said he was seeing CUbiC students hired in record numbers by their industry partners. “These students have the skillset, are being trained to integrate in the industry quickly and make an impact rapidly,” said Naylor.
Jonathan Hoffman, deputy director of the Multi X Office (MXO), a part of DARPA, spoke about the next steps for the MXO, the government office that runs the JUMP 2.0 program. They are widening their research goals from solely microelectronics, to other technologies like photonics and robotics. Hoffman said, “The question here is, what is that next generation of investment we need to make in materials and materials processing?”