Toward an Illinois Center for 3D Spatial Packaging of Interconnected Systems with Physical Interactions (SPI2)

Strategic Research Initiatives

James Allison (Industrial & Enterprise Systems Engineering)
Timothy Bretl and Kai James (Aerospace Engineering)
Nathan Dunfield (Mathematics)

SPI2 Figure

Research Problem

Spatial packaging of interconnected components with coupled physical interactions (thermal, hydraulic, electromagnetic, etc.) or SPI2 (pronounced “spy-two”), plays a vital role in the functionality, operation, energy usage, and life cycle of practically all engineered systems, from chips to ships to aircraft. SPI2 problems involve tight coupling between 3D packing, interconnect routing, and physics evaluation. These highly nonlinear spatial packaging problems, governed by coupled physical phenomena transferring energy through intricate and highly complex geometric interconnects, have largely resisted design automation, and can quickly exceed human cognitive abilities at even moderate complexity levels. The current state-of-the-art in defining an arrangement of these functionally heterogenous artifacts still largely relies on human intuition and manual spatial placement, which limits system sophistication and can result in biased human errors and delayed delivery of critical engineering systems.

SPI2 Center Vision

Drastically reducing the millions of man hours required to design new SPI2s, and

Opening the door to the rapid design of SPI2s with new levels of complexity, and with the potential for new functionality and performance.

Core Objectives

The core long-term objectives of this strategic research initiative, including anticipated external support, are:

  1. To establish a multidisciplinary Illinois center for SPI2,
  2. To build the required theoretical foundation for new classes of SPI2 design automation methods,
  3. Cultivate a highly interactive SPI2 research ecosystem, including a network across application and research domains that links fundamental advancements through to industry adoption of SPI2 design methods.

Societal Impact and Industry Applications

This center will serve as an incubator for a growing research community and as a link to SPI2 design practice. We hope that as this center launches and matures, SPI2 research transitions from a nascent community into a sustainable and well-developed ecosystem with established pipelines and networks between associated communities, fundamental research thrusts, the SPI2 knowledge base, design practice, market pulls for SPI2 design advancements, and SPI2 education and training. The real-world design problems involving SPI2 cut across a wide swath of engineering domains that are vital to society (e.g., medical devices, transportation, and computing hardware), entail especially complex design spaces (combining complex combinatorial/topological, geometric, parametric, and sequence decisions), and drive rich new intellectual contributions.