MANHASSET, NY -- The inextricable interdependence of technology processing and circuit design is behind the decision to overlap their technical programs at the 2012 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits to be held in Honolulu in June.
About 1,000 of the world’s leading experts in the field of microelectronics are expected to gather there to hear the latest research results from some 200 presenters.
“This year’s VLSI technology program will highlight breakthroughs in the evolution of CMOS scaling technology and new 3-D memory structures as the semiconductor industry begins to move devices to the 22 nm node for volume production,” said Ming-Ren Lin of Globalfoundries, general chair of the symposium on VLSI technology. “Our joint sessions with the technology symposium will provide a unique opportunity for discussion between both groups of participants,” said Ajith Amerasekera of Texas Instruments, general chair of the symposium on VLSI circuits, in a statement.
One interesting session may turn out to be controversial. The session titled “Is VLSI Innovation Dead?” will have seven experts from IBM, Intel, AMD, NTT, and MIT, Shizuoka and Stanford Universities discuss why companies in fields such as web software or server/OEMs are in the headlines, while semiconductor companies are noticeably absent. The question for discussion will be: is VLSI semiconductor innovation fine, dead, dying, or does it just need a kick-start?
At another session “Will the Future Have More Analog or Digital Processing?” panelists from Analog Devices, Broadcom, Renesas Electronics, Xilinx, UC-Berkely and University of Tokyo will discuss whether the overall trend to digital circuit implementations is irreversible, or if the push toward digital circuits replacing analog counterparts is already finished. This discussion is predicated on digital circuits at new technology nodes not exhibiting the same energy scaling as in the past, while analog-to-digital converter energy efficiency, for example, has improved more than 500-fold in the last decade.
Two invited plenary talks are also in the works: one by Mike Mayberry of Intel on his view through the “fog” of CMOS technology scaling, and one by Ichiro Yamada of the University of Tokyo on how MEMS can be leveraged to diseases.
In a luncheon talk prof. James Cutler of the University of Michigan will discuss recent trends in the space community, which are opening up access to space and sparking a wide variety of innovation globally. His talk, “Nano-Satellites, CubeSats, and the Next Space Generation,” will recount successes and failures.
More on the symposium to be held June 12 to June 15 is here.
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