Although the Custom Integrated Circuits Conference is marking its 25th anniversary Sept. 21 through Sept. 24 at the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose, the show isn't resting on its laurels. Instead, its educational and technical sessions and exhibits will examine emerging technologies.
As in the past, the conference will kick off with four full-day educational sessions on Sunday, Sept. 21. One session will focus on advanced RF, covering devices through systems, while another will look at advanced data converter design techniques. The third will delve into high-performance and low-voltage design challenges and techniques, while the fourth and final session will be a hands-on event for SoC/mixed-signal/RF design, verification, and testing.
Robert Lucky, an IEEE fellow who did much of the groundbreaking work on adaptive equalization at AT&T Bell Laboratories, will open the program with his keynote address, "Technology in the Midst of the Telecom Turmoil." This talk will survey the current landscape from the point of view of a technologist hoping to see a new world emerge with plentiful and cheap bandwidth, mobile and ubiquitous access, freely exchanged information, and well supported research.
On Tuesday evening, two panel discussions will debate "Outsourcing: From Fabrication to Packaging and Now Design. Will the U.S. Semiconductor Industry Survive Overseas Outsourcing?" and "Are Analog Device Models Really That Bad, or Are They Just a Convenient Excuse?" A third panel will examine "Technology: Falling Short of Product Developer Needs?" All three should provide some interesting perspectives.
A number of the technical sessions will cover analog and mixed-signal topics like analog filters, data converters, analog techniques, and noise modeling. Sessions targeting communications and RF technology will include Modeling RF Design; Next-generation RF Technologies; Transmitters and Receivers for Wireless Systems; Interconnect Schemes for Multi-GHz RF; RF and Microwave Local Oscillator Techniques; Broadband Wired Communications Systems; DSP for Communications; Building Blocks for Broadband Communications; and Application-Specific Signal Processors.
Digital system design also will be well represented with sessions covering many aspects of digital systems: Emerging Memory Circuits and Technology; SoC Design Methodology; SoC Design Challenges and Tradeoffs; Programmable Logic; Timing Recovery; Low-Power Circuits and Techniques; Nanodevices and Other Alternatives to CMOS Scaling; Directions in Process Integration; and Custom Design and Application.
Additional sessions in the technical program will examine bioelectronic systems as well as some of the challenges of testing chips in the 90-nm era.
For the full program, go to www.ieee-cicc.org.