IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine - Fall 2017 - 4

EDITOR'S NOTE

R. Jacob Baker

Welcome to the Fall 2017 Issue of
IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine!

This issue of IEEE Solid-State Circuits
Magazine offers seven articles from
members of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS) Women in Circuits Committee. Guest Editor Wanda
Gass has assembled an impressive
set of tutorials to highlight contributions of female leaders in the SSCS.
These articles focus on the design
challenges of the following:
■ 28-nm fully deplete silicon on insulator by Andreia Cathelin
■ mobile computing by Alice Wang
and Hugh Mair
■ p at ie nt monitoring by A lison
Burdett
■ security circuits for the Internet
of Things by Ingrid Verbauwhede
■ machine learning by Vivienne Sze
■ neural networks by Marian Verhelst and Bert Moons.
The last article in this special section is an interview in which Terri Fiez
explores the startup landscape for
IC products with venture capitalist
Mar Hershenson and discusses the
business case for the diversity of
startups with Lucy Sanders and Catherine Ashcraft of the National Center
for Women and Information Technology. The mix of articles in this
issue underscores the wide-ranging
contributions of our members that
make the world a better place by advancing the state of the art in the
solid-state circuits industry.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSSC.2017.2745879
Date of publication: 16 November 2017

FA L L 2 0 17

Additional articles of interest
in this issue include 1) part 2 of the
article on nanoscale MOSFET modeling for the design of low-power
analog and RF circuits by Christian Enz, Francesco Chicco, Alessandro Pezzotta, 2) Payam Heydari's
article on neutralization techniques
for high-frequency amplifiers, and
3) an article on the challenges of
physiological signal measurements
using electrodes by Long Yan and
Joonsung Bae.
We also have the regular, and everpopular, editorials/tutorials from
Marcel Pelgrom, Ali Sheikholeslami,
and Behzad Razavi in this issue.
Marcel's article discusses the importance of wasting time, a forgotten
art he would argue. As always, his
article is a great read. Ali's column is a
thought-provoking look at sinusoidal
circuits. The article provides, as the
series of his article name indicates,
circuit intuitions when looking at resonant, that is LC, circuits.
Behzad's series, "A Circuit for All
Seasons," points the spotlight on the
decision feedback equalizer (DFE).
The article is an introduction to equalization, and why it's need ed, followed by why DFE is used. Behzad's
thought f ul selection of topics in
this series gives a concise introduction to a great variety of circuits
and their uses while, at the same
time, providing a good summary
of techniques for those look ing
at refreshing their knowledge or,

IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE

perhaps, a different way of looking
at things for those already working
in the field.
The goal of the magazine continues to be to provide Society news
and information as well as a series
of self-contained resources to keep
SSCS members current with changes
in technology while, at the same time,
providing reviews of circuit design
concepts. This includes contributions
from experts describing the current
state of affairs and evolution of a
particular IC technology. We will also
continue to feature articles focused
on the contributions of luminaries.
Of course, suggestions from readers
are always welcome.
This issue marks end of my third
year as editor-in-chief (EIC) of the
magazine. While I have signed-up
for another three years, until the
fall of 2020, I would like to publicly
thank the people I work closely with on
every issue for their contributions,
including Geri Krolin-Taylor (and
her crew!), Abira Sengupta, Behzad
Razavi, Ali Sheikholeslami, Marcel Pelgrom, and Rakesh Kumar. I greatly
enjoyed reading the magazine when
Mary Lanzerotti and Dick Jaeger were
EIC and chair of the SSC Magazine
Advisory board, respectively, and I
am proud to attempt to continue their
good work today. As always we hope
you enjoy reading IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine - Fall 2017