Friday 18 December 2026 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Cambridge Graphene Centre Seminar Room, Electrical Engineering Division, 9 JJ Thomson Avenue.
This talk explores how AI-on-chip can enable more energy-efficient computing, while AI-for-chips can accelerate the design, optimisation and testing of semiconductor materials and hardware.
About
The escalating energy demands of modern AI necessitate a fundamental shift from traditional computing paradigms toward hardware that is both energy-efficient and intelligently designed. This talk explores the synergy between AI-on-chip and AI-for-chips as a dual-track solution for a sustainable technological future. The integration of emerging semiconductor technologies with standard complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) is firstly examined and how it helps in creating bio-inspired architectures, enabling high-performance in-memory computing at a fraction of the power cost of von Neumann systems. In parallel, the bottlenecks in semiconductor R&D are addressed, showcasing AI-driven capabilities to automate and accelerate the design, optimisation and testing of modern electronics. Together, these advancements provide a holistic roadmap for delivering next-generation electronics that are not only inspired by biological efficiency but are also developed through the very intelligence they aim to host.
Attend this talk to hear:
- How emerging semiconductor technologies can help build more sustainable AI hardware solutions.
- How AI is changing the way we design, develop but also test and validate new semiconductor materials and chips.
About the speaker
Prof. Themis Prodromakis, University of Edinburgh
Themis holds the Regius Chair of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh where he established the Centre for Electronics Frontiers (CEF) and is currently the head of the Institute for Integrated Micro and Nano Systems (IMNS). His work focuses on developing metal-oxide resistive random-access memory technologies and related applications and he leads an interdisciplinary team comprising 60 researchers with expertise across materials process development to electron devices and circuits and systems for embedded applications. He holds an RAEng Chair in Emerging Technologies and is adjunct professor at UTS Australia and honorary Fellow at Imperial College London. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the British Computer Society, the IET and the Institute of Physics. He served as the director of the Lloyds Register Foundation International Consortium for Nanotechnology and co-director of the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Machine Intelligence for Nano- Electronic Devices and Systems (MINDS). In 2015, he established ArC Instruments Ltd, which delivers high-performance testing infrastructure for automating characterisation of novel nanodevices in over 26 countries, and in 2025 he founded EVA, which is building new power-efficient AI hardware solutions. His contributions in memristive technologies and applications have brought this emerging technology one step closer to the electronics industry for which he was recognised as a 2021 Blavatnik Award UK Honoree in Physical Sciences and Engineering and with the Royal Academy of Engineering Princess Royal Silver Medal in 2025.