TIMA laboratory
Overview
- TIMA is a public joint research laboratory of the CNRS, Grenoble-INP and UJF (Shared Research Unit #5159). TIMA is a multinational team, with members and interns from all over the world. A large proportion of the research is performed in the context of cooperative projects with industrial and academic partners, supported by regional, national and European grants.
- The research topics of TIMA cover the specification, design, verification, test, CAD tools and design methods for integrated systems, from analog and digital components on one end of the spectrum, to multiprocessor Systems-on-Chip together with their basic operating system on the other end.
- More specifically, the Laboratory is structured in four research themes, whose main focus of investigation is characterized as follows:
- Theme 1: Architectures for robust and complex integrated systems. Reconfigurable and massively parallel multi-core architectures; fault tolerant and self-adaptive architectures; evaluation of robustness and qualification; secured architectures; architectures for nanotechnologies
- Theme 2: Design of integrated devices, circuits and systems. Design, fabrication and characterization for integrated micro and nano systems; energy scavenging and power management for autonomous devices; Bio-MEMS ; asynchronous circuits and systems (asynchronous IPs, NoCs, GALS, etc…); non-uniform sampling and signal processing (algorithms, architectures, circuits); reconfigurable asynchronous logic; safe and secured circuit design; smart CMOS vision sensors.
- Theme 3: Design and verification of system-on-chip architectures. Architectures, CAD and verification techniques for MPSOC's and integrated NoCs; modeling, simulation techniques and reconfigurable prototyping platform for system validation; specification and implementation of hardware-dependent software; assertion-based verification and synthesis; automatic generation of hardware checkers; verification of logic and temporal properties at the system level; formal methods for robustness analysis.
- Theme 4: Reliable mixed-signal / RF circuits and systems. CAD tools, design-for-test and testing techniques for mixed-signal, RF, microsystem devices.
- Members of TIMA contribute to many international events, participate in a large number of European research activities, and have established scientific agreements with universities and research laboratories worldwide.
- TIMA is at the origin of eight spin-off companies. Among the most recent ones, TIEMPO, was created in 2007 to industrialize the asynchronous circuit design technology invented by the CIS group; UROMEMS was funded by Hamid Lamraoui (MNS group) to develop his PhD results on MEMS pressure sensors, in cooperation with TIMC and the Parisian hospital Pitié Salpétrière: the company aims at solving urinary incontinence problems with a more sophisticated and better tolerated artificail urinary sphincter.
Higher education
- Most academics in TIMA are affiliated to an Engineering department of INP or UJF. They have important pedagogical responsibilities; in particular, they are in charge of the 3I and the E2I departments at Polytech (UJF), the Integrated Electronic Systems at Phelma (INP), the Embedded Software and Systems at ENSIMAG and Phelma (INP), the CSINA Master (conception de systèmes intégrés numériques et analogiques). The academics at TIMA teach in all the above programs. They also teach 80% of the courses in the “Design” option of the Micro-Nano-Electronics Master program, and they are involved in the Computer Science License and Master programs.
- Members of TIMA are responsible for four of the eight teaching and research platforms of CIME-Nanotech (Centre Inter-universitaire de Micro Electronique): clean room, embedded systems, micro-nano systems, and design. TIMA members are also active in continuous education at the Engineer level, taught every year to industry employees.
- TIMA researchers are active in giving tutorials at international conferences, and they participate in research-level annual summer schools. SERESSA (International School on the Effects of Radiation on Embedded Systems for Space Applications) and MPSOC (International Forum on Application Specific Multi-Processor Systems on a Chip) were founded by members of TIMA.
