The Impact of Dennard's Scaling Theory - IEEE

CHAPTERS
Denver Hosts Technical Seminars on Cutting-Edge
CMOS Technology and High-Speed Test
Alvin Loke, Denver Chapter Chair, alvin.loke@ieee.org, Bob Barnes, Denver Chapter Vice Chair &
Treasurer, bob_barnes@ieee.org, Tin Tin Wee, Denver Chapter Secretary & Webmaster,
tintin.wee@ieee.org
In the past year, the Denver
SSCS Chapter hosted eight
monthly seminars, including
four by SSCS Distinguished Lecturers.
These talks spanned a variety
of exciting developments in IC
design, cutting-edge CMOS technology,
and high-speed test.
In the first seminar of 2006, Dr.
Victor Chan of IBM gave a very
informative overview of state-ofthe-art
strain and substrate engineering
techniques to enhance
channel mobility in bulk and SOI
CMOS. In February, Dr. Osvaldo
Buccafusca of Avago Technologies,
who is also the Chair of the
IEEE Centennial Subsection that
covers northern Colorado and
southern Wyoming, described the
challenges and implementation of
a very high-speed optical sampling
oscilloscope for characterization of
optical serial links. Adam Healey
of Agere Systems, Chair of the
IEEE 802.3ap Standards Committee,
built on this theme with a discussion
of 10 Gigabit Ethernet over
backplane interconnects. This
topic is of significant interest to the
many Fort Collins IC designers
dealing with high-speed electrical
data links. Stefan Rusu presented
the next talk on Intel’s Dual-Core
Xeon® Processor. Abstracts and
slides for all lectures are available
Alvin Loke, Denver Chapter Chair,
presented an award of appreciation
to Dr. Pelgrom.
at the Chapter’s website.
Dr. Marcel Pelgrom of Philips
Research visited Fort Collins in
May to deliver our first Distinguished
Lecture of the year. A pioneering
expert on transistor variability,
he delivered an insightful
talk on the analog challenges associated
with nanometer CMOS.
Given its relevant nature, Dr. Pelgrom's
seminar drew a chapter
record attendance of 120!
The next DL seminar was given
by Dr. Kiyoo Itoh of Hitachi Central
Research Laboratory, who
spoke about ultra-low voltage
nano-scale embedded RAMs. Dr.
Itoh emphasized the importance of
fully-depleted SOI technology as
an enabling solution to overcome
The Distinguished Lecturer seminar by Dr. Marcel Pelgrom attracted an audience
of 120 at Fort Collins, CO on 11 May 2006.
device mismatch and allow for
ultra-low voltage operation. Prof.
Boris Murmann was the next
speaker, coming from Stanford
University to discuss the importance
of digital techniques to compensate
for analog limitations,
such as nonlinearity and variability,
in sub-100nm CMOS.
In August, Prof. Behzad Razavi
visited from the University of California
at Los Angeles. His much
anticipated seminar covered some
exciting new developments on the
60GHz RF CMOS transceiver front
and discussed design and modeling
challenges in that domain. Not surprisingly,
Prof. Razavi’s renowned
authorship drew quite a trail for
autographs. Thanks to members-atlarge
Herman Pang and Michael
Gildorf of Avago Technologies for
making possible our first ever seminar
recorded on DVD. The DVD
will be available to chapters, upon
request.
Following a social event in
November, the year ended with a
ninth lecture by Sam Naffziger of
Advanced Micro Devices, who
spoke on high-performance processors
in a power-limited world. Fort
The Society distributed this DVD as a
technical treat to attendees at the
Society’s Far East Chapters Luncheon
and Meeting in November.
72 IEEE SSCS NEWSLETTER Winter 2007