AdCom Highlights

The SSCS AdCom met last February prior to the ISSCC in San Francisco to discuss financial issues and future conferences.

Societies continue to be challenged by the IEEE's need for more dollars to support direct costs such as membership staff, human resources, and IT services, as well as indirect costs such as corporate accounting, Board of Director expenses, and Presidential support. Although many agree that these costs need to be cut, until the IEEE Board of Directors agrees on how to do so, allocating these costs across IEEE's 37 Societies has been the subject of considerable analysis in the Technical Activities Board meetings. Two proposals have been considered: the Principles Method is based on a Society's expenses, membership, and headcount, whereas the Blended Method is based on a Society's reserves. With the motion of SSCS Treasurer Dave Hodges and SSCS President Charles Sodini, the AdCom agreed to support the alternative of the Principles Method of infrastructure allocation. According to Hodges, by the end of 2002 SSCS reserves will have dropped to around $1.2 million from a high of $3.3 million at the end of 1999.

Publications Committee, top row, left to right: Lew Terman, Asad Abidi; bottom row, left to right: Bernhard Boser, Richard Jaeger, Stephen Lewis.

Support continues for JSSC, ISSCC, and a DVD 2003

JSSC continues as a popular and high-quality technical publication. The AdCom agreed to maintain its annual page count for 2003 at the same size as the previous two years (2,140 pages).

Despite last February's 28% drop in ISSCC attendance, the conference is one of the Society's premier venues for announcements in circuit advances. The Society agreed to advance a half-million dollar loan to start up the organization for the conference in 2003. The annual budget for this conference is approaching $2 million. Registrants now come from 40 countries and close to 1,000 different firms or academic institutions.

Online AdCom discussions since the February meeting have resulted in an additional cost savings for SSCS through the suspension of the Predoctoral fellowship for 2002-03 and beyond. Although delaying the next edition of the DVD and the history project also were discussed, the AdCom decided to proceed with the DVD project and the history project as originally approved. The DVD issued in August of 2001 has recouped half of its investment in the first year.

AdCom members, top row, left to right: Neil Weste, Takayasu Sakurai, Kiyoo Itoh, Gerhard Fetweis John Corcoran, Stan Schuster, Edgar Sanchez-Sinencio, Bryan Akland; middle row: Jan Van der Spiegel, Mark Horowitz, Anantha Chandrakasan, Christer Svensson, Gary Baldwin, David Johns, Rakesh Kumar, Jonathan David; bottom row, left to right: Chris Manglesdorf, David Hodges, Stephen Lewis, Charles Sodini, Bruce Wooley, Anne O'Neill, Richard Jaeger (missing: Lew Terman, Asad Abidi, Bernhard Boser, and Willy Sansen).

Other Conferences Supported

The AdCom voted to continue its technical co-sponsorship of the Asia Pacific-ASIC conference in Taipei, Taiwan, 6–8 August 2002 (details on page 5). The objective of AP-ASIC is to promote research and development activities of solid-state circuits. This biannual conference, which circulates in even years within IEEE Region 10 countries, was founded in 1999 with help from the SSCS.

Additional technical co-sponsorship was approved for the 2003 Non-Volatile Semiconductor Memory Workshop and the DAC Student Design Contest. SSCS will provide a judge for the Student Design Contest.

Kanuma to Lead ISSCC Program Committee in 2004

Akira Kanuma was approved as the Program Vice-Chair of ISSCC for 2003. As a result, in 2004 Kanuma will serve as the first ISSCC Program Chair from the Far East. (In 2001 Willy Sansen was the first ISSCC Program Chair from Europe.) Kanuma is a chief specialist in Toshiba Corporation's Network and Communication System LSI Division. He has received four Toshiba internal awards and has more than 40 patents in the area of LSI circuit design. He has published more than 20 papers and has co-authored a CMOS LSI textbook and a semiconductor handbook. Kanuma has been a member of the Institute of Electronics, Information, and Communication Engineers (Japan), and of the IEEE for more than 20 years. A member of the ISSCC Program Committee for eleven years, Kanuma received the ISSCC Service Award in 2000 for having served as Secretary of the ISSCC Far East Program Committee between 1998 and 2000.

During the February AdCom meeting, SSCS Executive Director Anne O'Neill received a plaque from Past-President Bruce Wooley, recognizing her outstanding contributions and dedication to the progress and success of the Society
Meetings Committee, top row, left to right: Toshiaki Masuhara, Anantha Chandrakasan, Neil Weste, Stan Schuster; bottom row, left to right: Dave Hodges, Mark Horowitz, Rakesh Kumar

AdCom to Scan Technology for Future Directions

Gary Baldwin, Chair of the SSCS Long-Range Planning Committee, reported for the committee, introducing the idea of technology scanning. Technology scanning addresses the questions:

• In what new technical directions should we be heading?
• What might we have missed?
• How should we incorporate any findings into SSCS?
• How should we adjust our affiliations, meetings, publications, and educational thrusts, based on new technical directions?

The goal is to extend the successful SSCS model of combining innovative research with practical issues, leading to commercially interesting technologies. By working only with "proven" technologies, SSCS may miss opportunities. SSCS abilities in commercially viable research may help those working on new technologies that now only have a hint of commercial viability. The result is to identify some new technologies and stimulate the SSCS community to work on them. Some examples mentioned were

• organics and biophotonics, from components to the integration perspective
• reconfigurable circuits from Xilinx blocks to full systems
• beyond silicon, but building on fabrication methodology
• interconnect technology
• sensors.

Baldwin proposed that SSCS appoint a New Technology Directions Committee of about four members. The committee would return to the AdCom with a proposal for an initial mode of operation and a few examples of new directions to explore, including topics that SSCS may need to revisit from the past. This committee would work closely with the Vision Committee and the New Technology Directions Committee of ISSCC. A broad international representation is desired and suggestions are welcome.

Suggestions for new technical directions for the Society should be emailed to Gary Baldwin, garyb@eecs.berkeley.edu.

Minutes of the AdCom can be found on the SSCS home page at www.ieee.org/sscs under the "About" button.