Portable System Solutions

The Tenth Annual IEEE International Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) Conference was held at the Hilton in Portland, Oregon, September 7?10, 1997. The conference was sponsored by the Rochester Section of the IEEE in cooperation with IEEE Solid State Circuits Council, OCATE, Oregon Section of IEEE, and Portland State University. The conference featured a full day of Workshops followed by a three day technical program including an excellent collection of invited speakers. The workshops were held at Portland State University, and the technical program took place in the Portland Hilton Hotel.

The conference opened with a day of workshops at Portland State University, a pleasant walk from the Portland Hilton Hotel. There were five workshops held during six half-day sessions. The workshop topics were: "Visual HDL", "ASIC Power Analysis Using QuickPower", "Synopsys' Synthesis", "An Excursion Into VHDL", and "Mixed Signal Scan Test - Past, Present, and Future". The workshops were well received with 58 attendees.

The technical program opened on Monday with the Keynote Speaker, Dr. Eli Harari, President & CEO of SanDisk Corporation. Dr. Harari presented "Flash Memory - The Universal Digital Storage Medium for the Coming Age of Consumer Electronics." In his talk Dr. Harari reviewed the technical achievements and market penetration of the Flash technology. He purported that Flash memory will equal and possibly even eclipse counterparts such as DRAM, magnetic, and optical storage media over the next decade. Directly following the Keynote Address were the vendor presentations. There were three presentations given by Crimble Microtest, Exemplar, and IBM.

The technical program began Monday afternoon and continued through Wednesday; having two parallel tracks of technical presentations running each day. There were 12 technical sessions: "Low Power I", "Emerging Test Technologies", "ASIC Applications", "CAD-I", "Communications", "Architectures", "Low Power II", "CAD II", "Digital Image and Signal Processing", "Devices and Technology", "Mixed Signal and Analog", "Simulation and Modeling". There were 68 technical presentations in the above categories with attendance as high as 59 people is a single presentation. A total of 109 papers were submitted for the conference with an acceptance rate of approximately 60%. 168 ASIC technologists registered for the conference this year. Of the 138 attendees from the US, 27 were from the East Coast, and 37 from the West Coast. There were 14 Attendees from Canada, 15 from Europe, and 30 from Asia. 520 copies of the conference proceedings were published by IEEE Publishing Services. 71 technical papers were published in the 370 pages of proceedings

The Luncheon was held on Tuesday. Dr. Levy Gerzberg, President & CEO of Zoran Corp, presented "Entrepreneurship in the USA" for the Luncheon Speech. In this talk Dr. Gerzberg presents a rosy picture for entrepreneurs. With abundant venture capital, low trade barriers, and communications infrastructures allowing international trade, small startups can grow very quickly. Dr. Gerzberg also discussed the changing business model from a fabless IC company to a company selling IC's and Intellectual Property(IP).

The conference Banquet was held Monday evening. For the Banquet Speech Dr. John Tanner, President & CEO of Tanner Research, presented "The Future of EDA: An Alternative View". This talk focused on the acquisition mentality of large and small EDA companies. Dr. Tanner presented an alternative view where small companies are able to keep creativity and competitiveness alive, and keep prices down. EDA companies should strive for the best "Value" proposition.

There were a number of top quality invited papers. Invited authors were: Anantha Chandrakasan(MIT), Mani Soma (University of Washington), Dwight Hill(Synopsys), Daniel Upp(Transwitch Corporation), Robert Franzo (Lucent Technologies), Robert Frye(Lucent Technologies), David Allstot(Oregon State University), and James Armstrong(Virginia Tech).

Two members of the Press attended the conference. Rom Willson, Special editor of semiconductor technology with the EE Times, expressed interest on writing an article for ASIC'98. Jim Lipman, from Electronic Design News(EDN), was impressed by the rich technical quality of the presentations. He has asked to be part of the ASIC'98 Technical Committee, and is interested in doing an article on the ASIC'98 conference.

Several conference attendees, and invited speakers praised the technical content of this year's ASIC conference. Several such attendees said they would make a point to have the Proceedings passed along to all of the members of their departments.

ASIC'97 Organizing Committee

Conference Chair: P.R. Mukund
Rochester Institute of Technology
Phone: (716) 475-2174
e-mail: mukund@cs.rit.edu

Technical Program Co-Chairs:

Ramalingam Sridhar
SUNY Buffalo
Phone: (716) 645-2422
e-mail: rsridhar@eng.buffalo.edu

Thaddeus Gabara
Lucent Technologies
Phone: (908) 582-2554
e-mail: gabara@research.att.com

Tutorial Workshop Chair: Robert Daasch
Portland State University
Phone: (503)-725-3806
e-mail: daasch@ee.pdx.edu

Exhibits Chair: Steven Ciccarelli
ANRO Engineering, Inc.
Phone: (716) 334-0278
e-mail: ciccares@vivanet.com

Steering Committee Chair: James Meindl
Georgia Institute of Technology
Phone: (404) 853-9416
e-mail: james.meindl@ee.gatech.edu

European Representative: Alfred Eder
Fachhochschule Augsburg
Phone: 011 49 821 5586 379
e-mail:eder@fh-augsburg.de

Secretary: David Sackett, Eastman Kodak
Treasurer: Kerry Van Iseghem, LSI Logic
Publicity Chair: Larry Church, OCATE
Publication Chair: Jo Dale Carothers, University of Arizona
Facilities Chair: Shih-Lien Lu, Oregon State University
Registration Chair: Dave Qualich
Rochester IEEE Liaison: Mark Schrader, Eastman Kodak
Webmaster: Cherrice Traver, Union College