IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine - Fall 2015 - 93

has a long history in electronics for
the German car industry.
Today, the semiconductor industry
is very large, and the annual growth
has fallen to around 6% per year. The
enormous cost of building new fabs
and to develop new technology slows
the growth and willingness to take
large risks with new technologies.
Since there are few products today that
really can benefit from the increased
performance given by Moore's law, it
is instead other technology advancements (e.g., more than Moore) where
the business opportunities may be
found, according to Dr. Weber.
One such area is the 3-D chip integration that is already used in dynamic
random-access memory modules and
camera modules in mobile phones.
To make the integration possible,
through-wafer vias (TSV) are often crucial (several other presentations at the
conference discussed the fabrication
of TSV in detail). One issue with chip
stacking is that, if the yield for each

chip is not extremely high, the cost of
the product can be very high, since it
is only possible to fully test the product after final assembly. Defective
components at this stage will be very
costly. Other challenges are related to
thermal issues, such as high temperatures or mechanical stress (mismatch)
at varying temperatures. The design
tools must also be able to handle multichip design and microsystems.
Finally, it is the cost versus benefit that will decide if 3-D integration is the best method for a given
product. By mounting chips close to
each other on a substrate in a module, often called 2.5D integration, the
costs and risks are lower and may be
a sufficient solution in many cases.

Best Student Paper Award
Each year, two prizes are awarded to
the best student papers. The criteria
for winning entries are good scientific
results, a good oral presentation, and
a well-written four-page paper for the

conference. The prize is divided into
two parts, one for digital design and
one for analog/RF.
Christoffer Fougstedt from Chalmers University of Technology won the
award for best digital design paper
with "Chromatic Dispersion Compensation Using Robust Low-Power TimeDomain Filters" (coauthors: Alireza
Sheikh, Pontus Johannisson, Alexandre Graell i Amat, Magnus Karlsson,
and Per Larsson-Edefors). Anders
Nejdel from Lund University won the
prize in the analog/RF category with
the paper "Positive Feedback for Passive Mixer-First Receiver Front-Ends"
(coauthors: Markus Törmänen and
Henrik Sjöland).
Next year's conference will probably be held near Stockholm with
local support from the Royal Institute of Technology.

-Ted Johansson, Vice Chair,
IEEE Sweden SSCS/CAS Joint Chapter

Emerging Systems for Big Data Management and Internet of Things
Feature at 2015 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits

The 2015 Symposium on Very LargeScale Integration (VLSI) Circuits featured two focus sessions on systems
for big data management and the
Internet of Things (IoT). In addition
to traditional IC-level developments,
these sessions included innovations
that extend well beyond a single IC,
reflecting the growing importance
of system-level developments to
our community. The themes of big
data, IoT, and smart sensing, however, could be felt well beyond these
two focus sessions and extended
throughout the four-day event.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSSC.2015.2474268
Date of publication: 2 December 2015

Kazuo Yano receives a token of appreciation from Symposium Program Chair Masato Motomura following his plenary presentation.

IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine - Fall 2015