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Silicon is a nonlinear material and optics based on silicon makes use of these nonlinearities to realize various functionalities required for on-chip communications. This article describes foundations of these nonlinearities in silicon at length. Particularly, self phase modulation and cross phase modulation in the context of integrated on-board and on-chip communications are presented. Important published results and principles of working of these nonlinearities are presented in considerable detail for non-expert readers.

The proliferation of embedded vision in today’s life has necessitated the development of System-on-Chips to perform utmost processing in a single chip rather than discrete components. Embedded vision is bounded by stringent requirements, namely real-time performance, limited energy, and adaptivity to cope with the standards evolution. In this article, an energy-aware self-adaptive System-on-Chip for real-time corner detection is realized on Zynq All Programmable System-on-Chip using Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration. A careful analysis of algorithm and efficient utilization of Zynq resources results in highly parallelized and pipelined architecture outperforms the state-of-the-art. A context-aware configuration scheduler application is developed to adhere to operating context and trades off between video resolution and energy consumption to sustain the uttermost operation time for battery-powered devices while delivering real-time performance. The experiments show that the self-adaptive method achieves 1.77 times longer operation time than a parametrized IP core, with negligible reconfiguration energy overhead. A marginal effect of partial reconfiguration overhead on performance is observed, for instance, only two video frames are dropped for HD1080p60 during the reconfiguration time.

In this study, MWCNTs were used as a filler for epoxy thin film composites, where the thin film was fabricated using the spin coating method. We investigated the dielectric properties of the MWCNT-filled epoxy composite, with filler loading in the range from 0 to 1.5 vol%. Additionally, the effect of various type of MWCNT filler treatments using polyoxyethylene octyl phenyl ether (Triton X-100), sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and 3-aminopropyltriethoxy silane (AMPTES) on the dielectric properties of epoxy thin film composites were investigated. The results showed that the increment of MWCNT loading increased the dielectric properties of the composite system. Meanwhile, chemically treated MWCNTs, especially MWCNT treated with SDS, showed good dielectric properties. Furthermore, morphological study showed an improvement in the dispersion of filler throughout the epoxy matrix in the treated composite system compared to the untreated system. TEM images also showed that treated MWCNT filler increased wall thickness of nanotube.

If we understand Moore's law and Amdahl's law then we can conclude that increasing number of CPU cores in a computing system is of no use just to attain high computation rate.We have designed a new arbitration technique which can use the CPU cores in a most optimised manner and can achieve high degree of task parallelism.The designed arbitration technique is superior to other existing arbitration technique in terms of CPU usage, bandwidth optimization and latency.The designed arbitration technique has been tested using high performance benchmark program to analyse its efficiency. Parallelization of task is considered to be a huge challenge for future extreme-scale computing system. Sophisticated parallel computing system necessitates solving the bus contention in a most efficient manner with high computation rate. The major challenge to deal with is the achievement of high CPU core usage through increased task parallelism by keeping moderate bus bandwidth allocation. In order to tackle the aforesaid problems, a novel arbitration technique, known as Parallel Adaptive Arbitration (PAA) has been proposed for the masters designed according to the traffic behaviour of the data flow. These masters are implemented using a synthetic benchmark program that measures sustainable memory bandwidth and the corresponding computational rate. The proposed arbitration technique is a strong case in favour of fair bandwidth optimization and high CPU utilization, as it consumes the processor cores up to 77% through high degree of task parallelization and also reduces bandwidth fluctuation. Some of the works published so far in this area are reviewed, classified according to their objectives and presented in an organised manner with a conclusion. Display Omitted

The ambient vibration-based micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) piezoelectric harvester has become an important subject in most research publications. Providing a green and virtually infinite alternative power source to traditional energy sources, this harvester will significantly expand the applications of wireless sensor networks and other technologies. Using piezoelectric materials to harvest the ambient vibrations that surround a system is one method that has seen a dramatic rise in the power-harvesting applications. The simplicity associated with piezoelectric micro-generators makes them very attractive for MEMS applications in which ambient vibrations are harvested and converted into electric energy. These micro generators can become an alternative to the battery-based solutions in the future, especially for remote systems. In this paper, we proposed a model and presented the simulation of a MEMS-based arrayed energy harvester under ambient vibration excitation using the Coventorware approach. This arrayed cantilever-based MEMS energy harvester that operates under ambient excitation of frequency band of 67 to 70 Hz, within a base acceleration of 0.2 to 1.3 g produces an output power of 6.8 μw and 0.4 volts at 20.1 k-ohms load.

Despite its excellent performance in microelectronic industry, silicon was not able to perform well in photonic devices arena. This is because the silicon has never been a good optical source mainly due to its indirect band gap structure. Many of the device functionalities in silicon have been reported, with an exception of – until recently – a reliable optical source. Silicon is a nonlinear material which makes use of its nonlinearities to realize various functionalities. This paper presents a theoretical treatment of generating and enhancing third-harmonic field which may be used as optical source, crystal state monitoring and all-optical signal processing applications.

The simplicity associated with the piezoelectric micro-generators makes it very attractive for MEMS applications, especially for remote systems. In this paper we reviewed the work carried out by researchers during the last three years. The improvements in experimental results obtained in the vibration-based MEMS piezoelectric energy harvesters show very good scope for MEMS piezoelectric harvesters in the field of power MEMS in the near future.