IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Summer 2018 - 77

Recent IEEE Silicon Valley SSCS Chapter Activities
Seminars, Workshops, and Distinguished Lecturer Talks

The Santa Clara Valley IEEE SolidState Circuits Society (SCV-SSCS)
Chapter held a number of seminars,
webinars, workshops, and Distinguished Lectures in late fall of 2017
and the winter of 2018. Of particular
interest to SCV-SSCS members were
talks by Prof. David Patterson, Prof.
C. Patrick Yue, Prof. Bernhard Boser,
and Dr. Chris Rowen. Late last year, the
Chapter also held an event with sister
IEEE Societies. In collaboration with
the local Chapters of the IEEE Signal
Processing Society, IEEE Computer
Society, and the local IEEE Section, the
IEEE SCV-SSCS Chapter conducted an
IEEE Artificial Intelligence (AI) Symposium. This article is just a highlight of these recent events held and
sponsored by the SCV-SSCS Chapter.
Please feel free to contact the IEEE
SCV-SSCS Chapter chair if you are
interested in presenting at meetings,
would like to attend Chapter events,
or are interested in volunteering. Full
information on Chapter activities and
upcoming seminars is available on
the Chapter website.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSSC.2018.2844660
Date of publication: 13 August 2018

"Vision and the Deep Learning
Explosion"
Dr. Chris Rowen, Cognite Ventures, gave
a very well-attended talk on 21 September 2017 on hardware and funding
trends for vision and deep-learning
(DL) applications.

Abstract
Everyone sees the excitement about
AI, but what's real? Everyone gets
pumped up about smart drones and
self-driving cars, but what does it
take to really harness the potential
of DL for real products? The academic benchmarks are impressive,
but how does research translate into
breakout businesses? Why is computer vision embracing deep neural
networks so passionately?
This talk looks closely at AI, (also
known as DL, neural network, and
cognitive computing technologies),
maps out the affected applications
and industries, and dives into the
profound impact it is having in one
example segment, computer vision.
The lecture explores the relationship among vision research, cloud
and embedded AI product opportunities, and the global explosion in
the number of DL startups. Finally,
the talk sketches some of the most

Dr. Rowen explaining the DL explosion in his talk at the IEEE Silicon
Valley SSCS Chapter.

important principles that successful
start-ups are following to succeed in
the frothy, frenetic, and fascinating
entrepreneurial game.

"Tactical Grade Gyroscope
Performance in a Consumer
Grade Process"
On 19 October 2017, Prof. Bernhard
Boser of the University of California, Berkeley, discussed his exciting
research on gyroscopes in inertial
sensors for direction.

Abstract
The Global Positioning System has
transformed navigation but unfortunately does not work in indoor
or dense urban environments. The
alternative, inertial navigation, is
either too inaccurate or too large,
power hungry, and costly in all but
niche applications.
Gyroscopes are responsible for direction in inertial sensors. Because
even small angular offsets can rapidly
add up to large location errors, significantly improved gyroscope accuracy is
the key to precise indoor navigation.
I will describe a prototype gyroscope
with tactical-grade performance. Unlike
state-of-the-art solutions, the device
does not rely on exotic fabrication

Dr. Rowen at the IEEE Silicon Valley SSCS Chapter in Santa Clara.

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IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Summer 2018

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