The Impact of Dennard's Scaling Theory - IEEE

James Meindl, friend and pioneer
of the solid-state circuits
community was recognized in
2006 with the highest IEEE
award, the IEEE Medal of Honor,
“for pioneering contributions to
microelectronics, including low
power, biomedical, physical limits
and on-chip interconnect networks.”
Meindl, a prolific author,
energetic mentor and broad
thinker, accepted the award as the
highlight of the IEEE Honors ceremony
in June 2006.
Besides his outstanding technical
contributions, Meindl is well known
to the solid-state circuits community
for his service in many important
roles, serving as the first editor of
the JSSC and chair of the ISSCC. In
2003 ISSCC recognized Meindl as
the author with the highest number
of ISSCC papers during its first 50
years. He has more than 360
authored papers in IEEEXplore.
Q and A
Meindl the Mentor
Publishing 360 papers requires a
lot of human interconnection, with
students and co-authors. Meindl is
an important force in generating
productive graduate students and
industry leaders. Over his career,
he has supervised over 80 Ph.D.
graduates at Stanford University,
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
and Georgia Institute of Technology,
many of whom have gone on
to have profound impact on the
semiconductor industry.
Q. How do you select your graduate
students?
A. The prime qualities I look for in
selecting graduate students are
ability/talent, motivation/commitment,
interpersonal skill/friendliness,
integrity and responsiveness.
The best test for these qual-
An Interview with James Meindl 2006
IEEE Medal of Honor Receipient
Microelectronics pioneer recognized with highest IEEE award
James Meindl receiving the IEEE
Medal of Honor June 2006 at the IEEE
award ceremony.
ities is to engage the student in a
one quarter/semester special projects
course prior to any decision
regarding a Ph.D. commitment.
For overseas students, this is often
not feasible and then at least a
one academic year commitment
with support is necessary based
on a resume and phone calls.
Q. What about written versus oral
qualifying exams?
A. Even though it was new to me
when I started on the faculty at
Stanford, I learned to prefer the
oral over a written exam because
the personal interaction with the
student under challenging conditions
is extremely revealing.
Observing the student “thinking
out loud and responding to
clues” is most informative.
Q. On picking thesis topics?
A. My favorite word of advice to a
Ph.D. student is “try the simplest
case,” which I learned from Professor
William Shockley, Nobel
Prize Recipient for the invention
of the transistor, whose office
PEOPLE
was only two doors away from
me at Stanford.
Q. How successful have you been
predicting your students’
accomplishments?
A. I have had my share of surprises
not as often related to thesis
research productivity as to down
stream professional accomplishments
that I might have (or not
have) projected. Higher level
professional accomplishments
are strongly related to “people
skills.” My favorite question for
myself regarding a Ph.D. graduate
is “what did he do best?"
Researching the Future
Q. Defining problems, researching
to find solutions, communicating
the solutions, presenting
and writing which of these is
most fun and which is hardest?
A. The most fun is finding an elegant
new solution and this is
what I strive to encourage every
student to experience. Nothing
is more challenging than asking
the right question in unambiguous
terms at the right time.
Checking solutions and interpreting
them to extract deep
insights are important aspects of
Ph.D. research that I learned
well at Carnegie Tech in the
1950’s.
Q. What are the pros and cons of
research that ends up in the
public domain versus the
research destined for privately
held and licensed patents?
A. The IP issues of today are complex
and can be vexing. The
SRC/MARCO Focus Center Program,
supported by a consortium
of US companies and
DARPA, has what I have found
to be a quite reasonable
Winter 2007 IEEE SSCS NEWSLETTER 51