DR. STEPHEN TRIMBERGER
From 1988 until 2017, Dr. Stephen Trimberger was employed at Xilinx, rising to the position of Xilinx Fellow, heading the Circuits and Architectures Group in Xilinx Research Labs. In his career at Xilinx, he touched every aspect of programmable logic and FPGA technology.
He was the technical leader for the XC4000 design automation software and led the architecture definition group for the Xilinx XC4000X families of FPGAs. He designed low-power and high-performance FPGA circuits used in FPGAs. He designed high-performance I/O circuits found today in all high-end FPGAs. His yield-enhancement innovations improved costs for FPGAs and improved reliability for high-end FPGAs.
Dr. Trimberger designed the Xilinx multi-context FPGA and wrote the first operation software and EDA software for multi-context FPGAs. This work was incorporated into products from subsequent startup companies in this area. In addition, he designed the bitstream security functions in the Xilinx Virtex and subsequent families of FPGAs and wrote the first software to encrypt FPGA bitstreams. Initial designs addressed design privacy and reverse-engineering; subsequent improvements addressed authentication, access rights, anti-tamper and anti-counterfeit. The innovations in Dr. Trimberger’s security design remain at the core of hardware security in Xilinx and other FPGAs.
Dr. Trimberger led the group that developed the first die-stacked 3D FPGA prototype at Xilinx. That device demonstrated manufacturable technologies that became the Xilinx Stacked Silicon Interconnect Technology (SSIT): wafer thinning, microbumps, through-silicon vias and die-on wafer assembly. As importantly, the prototype development project created the first supply chain for 3D and 2.5D devices and determined cost-effective and high-performance architectures for 3D electronics.
After retiring from Xilinx, Dr. Trimberger was a Program Manager in the Microelectronics Technology Office at DARPA, where he led activities in high-performance semiconductor technology and systems. Prior to Xilinx, Dr. Trimberger was a Senior Engineer at VLSI Technology where he developed EDA software and ASIC technology.
He is currently a Glenn L. Martin Visiting Research Engineer in the Institute for Systems Research at the University of Maryland, investigating novel semiconductor technologies and systems. Dr. Trimberger is a named inventor on approximately 250 U.S. patents, covering technology for FPGAs, ASICs, EDA, semiconductor processing, 3D packaging, circuit design, and hardware and internet security. His innovations appear today in nearly all commercial FPGA devices. He is recognized as an expert in patent strategy, patent prosecution and litigation. Dr. Trimberger has trained patent examiners at the USPTO in FPGA technology and his input assisted the Department of Commerce to write the export control limits for FPGAs and programmable logic.
He has served as Design Methods Chair for the Design Automation Conference, Program Chair and General Chair for the ACM/SIGDA FPGA Symposium and on the technical programs of numerous conferences and symposia. Dr. Trimberger has authored dozens of papers on design automation, FPGA architectures and hardware security. He authored five books, including one of the first textbooks on electronic design automation (“An Introduction to CAD for VLSI”) and one of the first on FPGAs (“Field Programmable Gate Array Technology”).
Dr. Trimberger is founder of the Trimberger Family Foundation, a non-profit organization with charitable programs supporting science and technology, amateur athletics, education and veterans. Since its founding, he has served as President of the Trimberger Family Foundation where he manages operations and oversees programs.
Dr. Trimberger received his PhD degree from the California Institute of Technology. While at Caltech, he joined the Planet-Crossing Asteroid Survey (PCAS) project, with principal investigator Gene Shoemaker, operated by Eleanor “Glo” Helin. PCAS searched for asteroids that could potentially impact planets, including Earth. In recognition for his contributions to this project, minor planet 2990 was named “Trimberger.”
He is a four-time winner of the Freeman Award, Xilinx’s annual award for innovation. Dr. Trimberger is a Fellow of the ACM, Fellow of the IEEE, and recipient of the 2018 IEEE Don Pederson Award for outstanding contributions to solid state circuits. He is recognized as a distinguished alumnus of the University of California, Irvine and was elected as a member of the United States National Academy of Engineering in 2016 for his contributions to solid state electronics.
