A resource-oriented data management architecture for nanoCMOS electronics

Abstract

The EPSRC pilot project Meeting the Design Challenges of NanoCMOS Electronics (nanoCMOS) began in October 2006 and is focused upon tackling the decreasing scale of modern semiconductor components. This scaling has direct impact upon the complete circuit and system electronics design process due to the variability in transistor behaviour caused by differences in atomic structure. To address these challenges, the project has focused upon large scale device simulations exploiting a wide variety of computational resources. This paper focuses on the approach adopted for managing the many hundreds of thousands of files being generated that are associated with these simulations. Specific challenges in achieving this are related to the fine grained security demanded in protecting intellectual property of data and metadata, and the seamless linkage of metadata associated with services. We believe that this data architecture has widespread applicability to many research areas.