This year's Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC) will be held May 16-19, 1999 in San Diego, CA. San Diego's cultural heart is the 1,000 acre Balboa Park with remains of a 17th Spanish town, gardens, museums, art and one of the world's largest zoos. Registration forms can be downloaded from the website http://www.ieee.org/conference/cicc. For additional information and general inquiries about the CICC, please contact the Conference Manager, Melissa Widerkehr, CICC, 101 Lakeforest Boulevard, Suite 270, Gaithersburg, MD 20877. Tel: (301) 427-0902. Email: cicc@his.com.
This year's Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC) will be held May 16-19, 1999 in San Diego, CA. The CICC '99 technical program ranges from system-on-a-chip (SOC) design and methodology, to CAD techniques, as well as custom circuits and their application in systems. The overall program consists of educational and technical sessions, a keynote address to set the stage, and several panel sessions and exhibits. The CICC is one of the premier international dissemination points for state-of-the-art innovation in circuits and systems.
On Sunday, May 16, tutorials are held for the day. At CICC'99 there are four sessions of invited speakers offering a valuable opportunity for practicing professionals to refresh their skills in traditional integrated circuit design methods, as well as to get acquainted with futuristic design principles for system-on-a-chip and embedded memory. These tutorials are rated among the best in the industry. They attracted close to 400 participants at CICC last year.
For 1999 tutorials, the conference has already reached agreements with several excellent speakers from various sectors of industry and university alike. Famous names like Eric Vittoz (CSEM) and Behzad Razavi (UCLA) will lead the discussion on traditional analog design concepts. Hidemi Ishiuchi (Toshiba) and Kenji Noda (NEC) will clearly outline the Japanese perspective on embedded memory. Colin McAndrew (Motorola) will continue the discussion of computer modeling for which the CICC has always been well known. A wide range of system-on-chip design perspectives such as a wireless point of view by Aon Mujtaba (Lucent), a testing point of view by Dean Adams (IBM) and a software point of view by Richard Swan (Cadence) are all part of the four parallel tutorial sessions at CICC'99.
To help celebrate CICC's 21st anniversary, a Beer and Comedy Night improvisational skit is scheduled following the tutorial. This is one of the first social events to enhance the atmosphere of the conference.
The keynote talk sets the stage for the remainder of the conference. The keynote speaker is Dr. Pallab Chatterjee, Sr. V.P., Texas Instruments who opens the formal presentation of the paper session with "Internet Age and System Level Integration: New Challenges or Business as Usual?" This talk will describe how the Information Age is driving system level integration.
137 papers will be presented, subdivided into 29 sessions. Included are 17 invited papers, two of these being tutorial. The session categories include:
System-On-a-Chip Design
Analog and Mixed-Signal Circuits and Systems
Digital Signal Processing
Wireless Communications
Networked Communications
Embedded Memories
Custom Application Specific Circuits
Programmable Devices
High-Level Design & Synthesis
Simulation, Modeling and Design Automation
Fabrication and Assembly
Testing and Reliability
Library Development and Design Methodology.
Two new areas have been added this year; IC Design Project Management and IP Generation & Management.
Representative papers comprising low power, technology and high performance are:
Dr. Peter Osman of the Cooperative Research Centre for Molecular Engineering and Technology, Australia will give a luncheon talk on Tuesday, May 18 entitled "Soap, Gold and Athletes Foot: A guide to the construction of 'A Biological Field Effect Transistor."
Four very informative and provocative panel sessions will be held at CICC'99.
Hot breakthrough technologies can often only be accessed through new, generally unproved startup companies. In "Dealing with startups: Is it worth the hassle?," the panel will discuss whether the benefits of dealing with a startup outweigh the risks? If so, when? Can startups really meet the needs of large corporations or is it safer to wait for established suppliers to develop a similar technology or acquire the startup? What steps can corporations take to ensure the viability of a startup before committing to their technology?
Many people recognize that behavioral models are useful for verifying functionality and interconnectivity of large-scale mixed-signal ICs. The "Analog Behavioral modeling-Tool or Toy for design?" panel will address the question of whether or not behavioral models are also useful for design. Can you use these models to speed up circuit simulations and identify problems that you might not find during circuit simulation? The panel will also discuss the usefulness of evolving VHDL and Verilog standards for modeling analog/mixed-signal systems.
Custom design provides a faster and denser solution than ASICs, although the long custom design time and resource prices are often prohibitive. However, custom-design barriers have been altered by the emergence of new players in the industry: third-party library and IP providers; the expansion of foundry services; and a broader set of tools and services from EDA suppliers. "Not Like Your Father's ASIC Vendor" will discuss the future role of the ASIC supplier and decide whether it will be reduced to just defining design methodology.
Anyone who has worked on a complex ASIC project in a system company or with an ASIC silicon provider has probably noticed some strange effects. "Silicon Vendors are from Venus, System Designers are from Mars" hopes to address this strangeness. These effects cause additional work, schedule delays, increased complexity and, in extreme cases, can even lead to product failure.
An exhibit area will provide the latest technical information on product development. With coffee, tea, and soda available many attendees will use this area to network. A special marketing session will be held at the beginning of the conference.
A Tech Symposium is planned on the last day during the lunch break. This program will be an informative meeting covering System-on-Chip issues by several invited speakers.
Our website http://www.ieee.org/conference/cicc contains the technical program of the conference, abstracts of accepted papers, exhibit information, special events and information on educational sessions. An editorial from the 1999 March issue of the Journal of Solid-State Circuits is also posted on the website. (Every March issue is devoted to selected papers from the previous year's CICC conference.) Also the best paper selected from the conference is indicated. Easy downloads of registration forms allow quick access to newly posted events.
For additional information and general inquires about the CICC, please contact the Conference Manager, Melissa Widerkehr, CICC, 101 Lakeforest Boulevard, Suite 270, Gaithersburg, MD 20877. Tel- (301) 427-0902.