IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Spring 2018 - 3

editor's note

R. Jacob Baker

Welcome to the Spring 2018 Issue
of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine!

This issue of IEEE Solid-State Circuits
Magazine details the contributions
of William S. Carter and Stephen M.
Trimberger, the recipients of the
2018 IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award
in Solid-State Circuits, for contributions to field-programmable gate
array (FPGA) technology. The award
recipients were pioneers at Xilinx.
They created and refined the FPGA
as a new semiconductor product
category. The FPGA market is now a
multibillion-dollar industry. Carter
saw that Moore's law would make
FPGAs increasingly capable and useful. He developed efficient circuits
for implementing PGAs. He designed
t h e X i l i n x XC20 0 0 a n d XC30 0 0
FPGAs and led the engineering effort on later versions. Trimberger's
experiments on the architecture of
the fabric and its influence on the
performance of a user design as
well as its impact on the design of
the silicon was crucial in developing
efficient FPGA architectures. Many
features of this approach are now
standard for all programmable logic manufacturers.
Carter and Trimberger helped form
a new industry with profound and
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSSC.2018.2822578
Date of publication: 22 June 2018

beneficial societal impact. FPGAs are
of a two-part article on the calibraused in many applications, including
tion and dynamic matching in data
communications, the aerospace and
converters. The articles provide some
defense industries, IC prototyping,
very useful, relevant techniques to
audio/video and image processing, auimprove data converter performance
tomotive electronics, consumer elecand should be a one-stop reference
tronics, industrial control, security and
for those working in this field or trysurveillance, and mediing to learn about techcal systems. The award
niques to practically
winners' technical leadimplement data conCarter and
ership, innovation, and
verters in products.
Trimberger helped
vision have been critiThe goal of the
form a new induscal to making FPGAs as
magazine continues to
try with profound
popular, important, and
be to provide Society
and beneficial
useful as they are today.
news and information
societal impact.
To further the discusas well as a series of
sion of FPGAs, this issue
self-contained resourcincludes a reprint of Trimberger's 2015
es to keep IEEE Solid-State Circuits Soarticle from the Proceedings of the IEEE
ciety members up to date with changes
detailing the three ages of FPGAs. Arin technology while, at the same time,
ticles from André De Hon and Mike
providing reviews of circuit design
Dini are also included, which provide
concepts. This includes contribuadditional details about the past, and
tions from experts describing the
current, state of the FPGA.
current state of affairs and evoluIn addition, as usual, several artion of a particular IC technology. We
ticles of interest to readers ranging
will also continue to feature articles
from tutorials to technology overfocused on the contributions of luviews are included in this issue.
minaries and solid-state circuit techThese include the always-popular
niques and directions.
editorials/tutorials from Marcel PelWe hope you enjoy reading IEEE
grom, Ali Sheikholeslami, and BeSolid-State Circuits Magazine. Please
hzad Razavi. In addition to these
send comments to me at rjacobbaker@
contributions, Ken Dyer, John Keane,
gmail.com.
and Steve Lewis provide the first part

IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE

s p r i n g 2 0 18

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Spring 2018