IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Spring 2020 - 16

paper awards for more than half of
his presentations.

The Person
Apart from all the great times we had
at Broadcom Netherlands, how much
we learned, the papers we wrote, and
the patents we filed, there remains
only one thing more important: during the almost 20 years we worked
together, virtually every team member went through life's hard times,
mourning, and sorrow, times that are
so painful, personal, or both that they
could never be shared with anyone
but your closest friend. After all, life
is what happens while you're making
other plans. In all those cases, Klaas
emerges as a friend who is always
there for you and really helps wherever he can. He knows and will let you
know what really is important and
what is not and that, sometimes, electronics is only the most important of
all unimportant things.

FIGURE 1: The Broadcom Netherlands Building.

About the Authors

FIGURE 2: The Broadcom Netherlands team in 2001 (back row, from left): Erol Arslan, Jan
Mulder, Rudy van de Plassche, Klaas Bult, Chi-Hung Lin, and Frank van der Goes. (Front row,
from left): Chris Ward, Jan Westra, Marcel Lugthart, and Els van Zijl. (Source: Chris Ward;
used with permission.)

The Mentor
Then, there was always the push toward
writing world-class publications, preferably for presentation at the IEEE
International Solid-State Circuits Conference. Klaas would convince the
whole management team that writing
good-quality publications is actually
very important, and he would gladly
pave the way for anyone to publish
good results. But nobody went to
any conference unprepared. Klaas
organized rehearsal sessions to polish presentations down to the last
tiny detail. Every one had to be done
again and again until it was absolutely

S P R I N G 2 0 2 0

impossible to improve further-and
Klaas can really do this with enormous passion. Some presentations
must have been practiced more than
10 times before even reaching the
state where he would, almost reluctantly, agree to publication, and then
the presentations go on to win bestpaper awards. But, to be completely
honest, he did exactly the same thing
for his own presentations and gladly
received all the feedback we would
throw at him. This culture, together
with his passion for presenting and
teaching, must have been at least one
of the reasons why Klaas won best-

IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE

Jan Westra received his M.Sc. and
Ph.D. degrees from the Delft University of Technology in 1993 and 1998,
respectively. From 1998 to 1999, he
was with Philips Research Laboratories, Eindhoven, The Netherlands,
where he worked on high-resolution
data converters. He joined Broadcom
Netherlands in 2000, where he has
been involved in analog and mixedsignal IC design for cable modem,
satellite, and set-top box transceivers.
His research focus is in Ethernet transceivers for data centers and automotive applications.
Frank van der Goes received his
M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the
Delft University of Technology in
1990 and 1996 respectively. From
1996 to 1999, he was with Philips
Research, Eindhoven, where he worked
on analog signal processing for radio
applications. In 1999, he joined Broadcom, where his research focus is in
analog and mixed-signal IC design
for cable modem, satellite, and settop box receivers and in transceivers
for Ethernet.

IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Spring 2020

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