IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference

IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference. The IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference is a premier annual technical conference focused on the design and application of integrated circuits. Organized by the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society, it serves as a key forum for presenting advances in custom integrated circuit and system-on-a-chip technologies. The event brings together leading engineers, researchers, and industry professionals from academia and corporations like Intel, Texas Instruments, and IBM.

History and background

The conference was first held in 1979 in Rochester, New York, emerging during a pivotal era of advancement in semiconductor device fabrication. Its establishment was driven by the growing complexity of application-specific integrated circuit designs and the need for a dedicated forum beyond broader events like the International Solid-State Circuits Conference. Early meetings were closely associated with the Rochester Institute of Technology and key figures in the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. Over the decades, it has been held in various locations across the United States, including San Diego, San Jose, California, and Orlando, Florida, reflecting its national prominence within the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers technical community.

Conference scope and topics

The technical program encompasses the full spectrum of custom integrated circuit design, with a strong emphasis on mixed-signal and radio frequency technologies. Core topics include analog-to-digital converter design, phase-locked loop circuits, power management solutions, and memory controller architectures. Sessions also cover emerging areas such as machine learning accelerators, integrated photonics, and circuits for quantum computing interfaces. The conference places significant focus on design methodologies leveraging advanced CMOS nodes from foundries like TSMC and GlobalFoundries, as well as silicon-on-insulator and FinFET technologies.

Organization and structure

The event is steered by a committee of volunteers primarily from the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society, with members from leading institutions such as the University of California, Berkeley and companies like Analog Devices. The typical format includes invited plenary talks from industry luminaries, parallel technical paper sessions, interactive poster presentations, and intensive tutorial workshops. A key feature is the exhibition hall where major electronic design automation vendors like Cadence Design Systems, Synopsys, and Mentor Graphics demonstrate their latest tools. The conference also hosts panel discussions on pressing issues like semiconductor industry trends and the challenges of design for manufacturability.

Impact and significance

The conference has profoundly influenced the trajectory of integrated circuit engineering by providing a vital venue for disclosing cutting-edge circuit techniques years before commercial product release. It has accelerated the adoption of methodologies like system-in-package integration and low-power electronics design, impacting sectors from wireless communication to automotive electronics. Proceedings are archived in the IEEE Xplore digital library, forming a critical corpus of knowledge for the global semiconductor research community. The event's role in fostering collaboration between academia and industry has been cited as instrumental in advancing the state of the art in fields like 5G transceiver design and internet of things sensor nodes.

Notable papers and awards

The conference has featured numerous landmark presentations that have shaped the discipline. Early influential work included pioneering papers on delta-sigma modulation techniques from researchers at University of California, Los Angeles and Bell Labs. The conference bestows several prestigious awards, including the Best Paper Award and the Best Student Paper Award, which have recognized breakthroughs in areas such as high-speed SerDes design and energy harvesting circuits. The invited Jack Kilby Award for Outstanding Student Paper is a notable honor, named for the Nobel laureate and inventor of the integrated circuit. Recipients of these awards have often gone on to present at the VLSI Symposium and the European Solid-State Circuits Conference, underscoring the global reach of the research premiered.

Category:IEEE conferences Category:Integrated circuits Category:Engineering conferences Category:Electronics industry