The Seventh IEEE International ASIC Conference and Exhibit
A Report on ASIC'94

The Seventh IEEE International Application Specific Integrated Circuits Conference and Exhibit sponsored by the Rochester Section in cooperation with the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Council was held at the Rochester Riverside Convention Center on September 19 to 23, 1994. For the first time, the ASIC Conference was operating with the cooperation of the largest technical council of the IEEE. The `94 Organizing Committee was also more diversified in terms of geographical representations. Three members were based outside of Rochester. The Conference had continued in 1994 its evolution from the original regional character to become a more global technical forum. In this report, important statistics are summarized and some of the highlights of the Conference are described.
The format of the conference remained essentially unchanged from ASIC'93. The technical program consists of 101 regular papers, including 12 tutorials. There was one speaker for each of the Keynote, Banquet and Luncheon sessions. Immediately following the Keynote Session, 3 invited speakers also gave presentations on topics of special interest. Prior to the main technical program, workshops were conducted on Monday and Tuesday. A total of 9 workshops covered topics in Introduction to ASIC design, VHDL, Rambus, Digital Signal Processing and Design for Test. They were attended by 183 people (compared with 143 in 1993). The hands-on hardware oriented design workshops were filled to capacity. This was a fairly strong vote by attendees expressing preference in hands-on over lecture- only workshops.
The conference kicked off with the Keynote Session with a talk given by Dr. Ron Smith, General Manager of the PCI (Peripheral Components Interconnect) Division of Intel Corporation. It addressed the issues faced by Personal Computer in making the leap into multimedia and communications applications. This topic highlighted the strong growth in multimedia-equipped PC's sold into the home/consumer market. Again, the Holiday Inn Dining Room served the purpose very well. Following Dr. Smith's presentation, 3 distinguished invited speakers gave the audience insightful looks at emerging applications in video information, challenges in design automation and fundamentals in interfacing with the analog world. Dr. Bryan Ackland of AT&T Bell Labs spoke on ``Architectures for VLSI Video Processing''. Dr. Lou Scheffer of Cadence Design addressed the EDA industry's concerns in ``ASICs, CAD and Emerging Applications ''. A tutorial on ``ADC and DACs: Practical Techniques and Limitations '' was presented by Martin Mallinson of Crimble Micro Test.
The main conference program showed progress in technical strength and timeliness of topics. It consisted of 15 sessions with mostly 4 running in parallel at one time. This year the total number of paper/workshop/tutorial proposals submitted was 182. The acceptance rate remained the same as last year's at 62%. 3 papers were withdrawn due to job changes of the authors. In the Exhibit area, 9 vendors (including 2 first-time exhibitors) showed products covering the full spectrum of the ASIC industry.
The Conference Banquet was held on Wednesday evening at the Holiday Inn. Bob Pease of National Semiconductor, gave a delightful talk on `` What's all this feedback stuff? '' Bob is a nationally known author and writes the popular ``Pease Porridge'' column in Electronic Design magazine. On Thursday, Arpad Toth of Eastman Kodak spoke at the Luncheon on ``Image Enabled Multimedia Communications'', a timely look at some of the issues in handling high resolution photographical quality images in the public telecommunications network. The Evening Panel Discussion on ``Reversible, Adiabatic and Conservative Devices, Cold Fusion of Electronics? or Hope for the Future'' was moderated by Thad Gabara. It was a first in bringing together researchers in that emerging field for a public discussion. The panelists included J. Storrs Hall (Rutgers), Tom Knight (MIT), Paul Solomon (IBM), Lars Svensson (ISI) and Tom Wik (AT&T).
The 1994 Conference Proceedings was published by IEEE Publishing Services. The number of pages in 1994 was 481. The total number of copies printed was 600 reflecting an increase of 50 more to be distributed by the IEEE Book Broker program. A total of 150 copies were ordered by IEEE.
The attendance at ASIC'94 was 268 registrants. Among them, 204 were from the United States, 31 from Asia, 12 from Canada, and 20 from Europe. One person from South America also attended. The strong (24%) participation from international attendees, especially from Asia, remained significant.
Overall, the Technical and the Organizing Committees are congratulated for their excellent efforts behind the strong ASIC'94 program. The Conference has emerged in 1994 ready to take on the task of making it accessible to a more diversified audience and better positioned to serve the needs of the international ASIC community.
Submitted by Paul Lee. Chair, ASIC'94
December 14, 1994.

Photos from ASIC'94

Figure 1. Dr. Ron Smith of Intel presents the Keynote Session.

Figure 2. Invited Speakers, Bryan Ackland, Lou Scheffer and Martin Mallinson (left to right) chat with Subhash Roy (Technical Chair) and Paul Lee (Conference Chair).

Figure 3. Bob Pease makes a point in his Banquet Address.

Figure 4. Luncheon speaker Arpad Toth discusses image- enabled communications.

Figure 5. The panelists are (left to right) in the front row, Paul Solomon (IBM), Tom Wik (AT&T), Lars Svensson (ISI), and in the back row, Thad Gabara (moderator, Bell Labs), J. Hall (Rutgers) and Tom Knight (MIT).

Figure 6. The Exhibit Hall shows the fast pace of market evolution in the ASIC industry.