SemiSerious

The theme of this trip for me was, “I get by with a little help from my friends.” Upon arriving in San Francisco, I found myself in a taxi bound for the conference hotel without my wallet and barely enough cash for the fare. Fortunately, two of my SI process analysis colleagues were already there, and they were gracious (and trusting) enough to put my room on their own credit card. Problem solved.

As always, Sunday is a training day. Two tracks were offered, and I chose the “Memory Technologies for 45nm and beyond.” This offered some interesting material. There were excellent sections on SRAM (Harold Pilo, IBM), DRAM (Howard Kirsch, Micron), and emerging NVM (Agostino Pirovano, STMicroelectronics). In my experience, STMicro presentations at these events are always excellent. This was another thorough and objective summary of a hot topic area. Anyone getting started in understanding current and future trends for non-volatile memory should start with this presentation.

Monday morning began with presentation of the yearly Electron Device Society Awards along with three plenary talks. C.G. Hwang?s from Samsung gave an especially entertaining lecture, “New Paradigms in Silicon Industry, Business, and Technology.” How could anyone doubt that Samsung will be the industry?s number one some day after listening to this speech?

The Monday reception offers an excellent chance to meet old friends and establish new contacts in the main brain trust of the semiconductor technology. My evening was abbreviated however. It was only a quick hello to Scott Jones, our ICKnowledge partner, and a quick good-bye for me. My farewell also turned out to be quite final (in terms of the conference). My early departure from the reception on Monday night was driven by a horrible intestinal bug. I dared not leave my hotel room for the rest of the conference.

And that?s where my friends came to my aid again. Ramesh and Moira kept tabs on me the rest of the time to make sure I was still alive. Between the drugs and a half-gallon Pedialyte supplied by Moira, I was able to re-hydrate myself and establish sufficient electrolyte levels for the long flight home Wednesday night.

I hope to be a more active participant next year, but until then, I will post more summary and opinion of the technical content from this year?s IEDM. For this too, I will need a lot of help from my friends.

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