The SSCS AdCom met on February 14th, the day before the start of the ISSCC, in San Francisco. All 23 of the elected and appointed members of the Administrative Committee, along with 7 committee members, were in attendance at the meeting. The interest and dedication of the members was apparent in the full attendance, numerous thorough reports, and an agenda that engaged all the allotted time.
Here are some of the actions from the AdCom meeting.
L-r: standing Bob Cordell, Dick Hester, Rudy van de Plassche, Chris Mangelsdorf, Stephen Lewis, Sergio Bampi, John Trnka, Tim Tredwell, Ashwin Shah, Richard Jaeger, Neil Weste, Mark Horowitz, Asad Abidi, Eric Vittoz, Ebi Friedman, Toshiaki Masuhara,Willy Sansen Seated: Steve Kosonocky, Stan Schuster, TR Viswanathan, Charles Sodini, Dave Hodges, Lew Terman, Bruce Wooley, Robert Swartz, Peter Verofstadt, Kevin O'Connor, Nicky Lu and Jan Van der Spiegel. Not included, Gerhard Fettweis.
President Lew Terman announced organizational improvements in the 1999 SSCS Administrative Committee. Each AdCom member now serves on at least one and often two or three committees and/or in other positions of responsibility within the Society governance. AdCom members were surveyed in order to provide them with assignments in their respective areas of interest. All Committees now have new staffing as a result. Two new committees have also been formed: the Technical Committee and the Standards Committee will return to the next AdCom with proposals for their activities.
SSCS AdCom voted to add two new meetings to the list for which the SSCS provides technical Co-Sponsorship in 1999: Asia Pacific Conference on ASICs and the International Workshop on Memory Technology for 1999. This raises to 10 the number of technically co-sponsored meetings.
The Asia Pacific Conference on ASICs is a new meeting being sponsored by the SSCS Seoul Chapter. It will be held August 23 - 25, 1999 at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. Moon-Key Lee, the SSCS Chapter and conference chair, and Dr. Hyungkyu Lim, Vice-President of Samsung Electronics and the program chair presented the details for the conference to Ad Com. Hosted by Yonsei University, the conference technical co-sponsors include all three SSCS chapters in Region 10: Seoul, Korea; Taipei, R.O.C. and Tokyo, Japan. Future goals include rotating the host location of this meeting among the Region 10 chapters and scheduling the meeting in even numbered years to avoid conflict with the VLSI Symposia held in Japan and the VLSI TSA meeting held in Taiwan, both in odd-numbered years.
The International Workshop on Memory Technology will be held August 9-10,1999 at the Fairmont Hotel, San Jose, CA It has been sponsored by the Computer Society for nearly a decade on the West Coast. The Solid-State Circuits Society/Council provided technical co-sponsorship many times over the years. This AdCom action renewed the relationship with the workshop for 1999.
Charlie Sodini, the SSCS Meetings Chair, led AdCom through reports of its four sponsored conferences and workshop, and the now list of 10 meetings for which the SSCS provides technical Co-Sponsorship. See the last page of the newsletter for complete details on meetings planned for the remainder of the year.
Dick Jaeger, the Society Publications Chair presented to AdCom status reports and motions on the Journal of Solid State Circuits, the Transactions on VLSI Systems, electronic publishing and manuscripts for IEEE Press.
The Publications Committee recommendation to increase the JSSC page budget to 2,300 pages for the year 2000 was passed by AdCom. This budgeted page count is more in line with the actual page count of the Journal for the last two years, and assures more accurate financial planning for the Society and IEEE.
The SSCS Publications Committee met prior to AdCom to
discuss recommendations
subsquently adopted by AdCom. L-r: Rudy van de Plassche, Stephen Lewis,
Asad Abidi, Richard Jaeger, Tim Tredwell, Eric Vittoz.
The Transactions on VLSI Systems, for which SSCS is one of the three sponsors, was authorized to expand its publication schedule from four to six issues per year. Even with a very rigorous 30% acceptance rate of submitted papers, the Transactions more than doubled the number of pages produced last year. It is growing a consistent backlog of accepted articles this year as it struggles to stay within its planned budget for publication. The quality of papers and focus of the field is growing in usefulness and importance.
$85K was set aside to produce the 1966-88 JSSC CD-ROM set. This set will complete the issuance of all issues of the Journal of Solid-State Circuits back to Volume 1 Number 1 on CD-ROM. The set is expected to be available in time for the 2000 ISSCC. $25K was authorized to move towards production of a compiled 1966-present JSSC set on DVD.
SSCS agreed to sponsor the following IEEE Press Books, which are expected to be available in 2000:
Design of Performance Microprocessors
Edited by A. Chandrakasan (MIT), W. Bowhill (Compaq), and F. Fox (Rambus)
Testing of Digital Circuits
By N. Jha (Princeton) and S. Gupta (USC).
Advanced Theory of Semiconductor Devices
By Karl Hess (Illinois).
Steve Kosonocky, Membership Chair, reviewed the continued growth of SSCS membership, which has just passed 12,000. SSCS remains the IEEE's second fastest growing Society. AdCom voted to send a personalized welcome letter to all new members, starting later this year.
Kosnocky also presented a proposal arising from interest in growing more chapters and membership in countries with emerging economies, which resulted in approval of a three year program to subsidize memberships in the IEEE and SSCS. Subsidies will be made available to members who qualify for IEEE minimum income status rates; i.e., their prior yearŐs income did not exceed US $8,600 or the equivalent. This subsidy will be offered only in conjunction with the formation of an SSCS chapter or joint chapter with one or more other IEEE society. SSCS plans to focus first on areas where similar subsidy programs are already flourishing within IEEE, and where there is interest in joint chapters. As the success of this program is proven, SSCS will initiate it in new regions and sections interested in SSCS chapter formation.
The Society will donate $50K to the endowment of the IEEE History Center. The donation will be matched 1 for 1 by the IEEE Foundation. The mission of the History Center is to preserve, research, and promote the history of information and electrical technologies. Most of the important advances of the 20th century are in the technical areas covered by the IEEE. Yet few historians are trained in science and even fewer are trained in technology and engineering. Journalists and government leaders lack understanding. By promoting worldwide the collection, study and dissemination of historical information about technologies and the IEEE itself, the IEEE History Center attacks the knowledge deficit and enhances the image of technology and science in general, the IEEE, and its members. AdCom felt that it was very important to support the capturing of technical history, in particula in solid-state circuits, while most of the early practitioners are still available.
The History Center has already produced a number of projects and books of interest to SSCS members, including:
Facets: New Perspectives on the History of Semiconductors, edited by Andrew Goldstein and W. Aspray (IEEE History Center, 1997)
Engineers as Executives: An International Perspective by William Aspray et al. (1994)
Sparks of Genius: Portraits of Electrical Engineering Excellence by Frederick Nebeker (1993)
Order History Center books through
IEEE Customer Service.
Browse their abstracts at:
http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/
Technological Competitiveness: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on the Electrical, Electronics and Computer Industries edited by W. Aspray (1993)
The History Fund is a quarter of the way towards the goal of a $10 million endowment. The importance of Technical Society financial support of the History Center has been emphasized by the IEEE Foundation, through its offer to match all Society donations to the CenterŐs endowment, up to a total of one million dollars. Although the History Center plans eventually to solicit donations from profit-making corporations and foundations, a fund raising message is always strongest when support has been shown first by those closest to the effort, such as the IEEE Societies. Emerson Pugh, the IEEE History Committee Chair and 1989 IEEE President, explained the History Center's plans and efforts.
