• Plenary sessions: On the technology side, the plenary talk5G Evolution and 6G will be given by Takehiro Nakamura, Sr. Vice President/General Manager of 5G Laboratories at NTT Docomo, while Intel’s Chief Technology OfficerMichael Mayberry will speak on The Future of Compute: How the Data Transformation is Reshaping VLSI.

At a pre-event press briefing held via Zoom videoconferencing, the organizers of the venerable conference, which for 40 years has explored the latest frontiers in both semiconductor technology and circuit design, described how they took pains to incorporate as many opportunities for live discussion and brainstorming by attendees as possible.

“We wanted to replicate not just the content but also the onsite interactions attendees expect when they come to our conference,’ said Tomas Palacios, Program Chair of the VLSI Technology Symposium and Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Our more traditional content is represented by pre-recorded on-demand sessions, but to provide the invaluable interactions our attendees desire we have 40 live events of various types that cover a range of topics from the current state-of-the-art to future directions in technology and circuit design.”thanks 

Indeed, the strategy seems to be working: To date, 1,021 people have pre-registered for the conference, vs. 868 attendees in 2018, the last time the event was held in Hawaii. The VLSI Symposia is a joint conference sponsored by the IEEE Electron Devices Society and the Japan Society of Applied Physics, in cooperation with the IEEE Solid State Circuits Society.

This year’s theme is “The Next 40 years of VLSI for Ubiquitous Intelligence” and more than 200 technical papers will be presented, along with the following events, among others:

• Plenary sessions: On the technology side, the plenary talk5G Evolution and 6G will be given by Takehiro Nakamura, Sr. Vice President/General Manager of 5G Laboratories at NTT Docomo, while Intel’s Chief Technology OfficerMichael Mayberry will speak on The Future of Compute: How the Data Transformation is Reshaping VLSI.
On the circuits side of things, Jen Lloyd, Vice President of Analog Devices’ Precision Technology and Platforms Group, will give a plenary talk titled Silicon is Greener: Why Innovation in Circuits is Needed for Sustainability, while Shigeo (Jeff) Ohshima, Technology Executive, SSD Development and Application Engineering at Kioxia, will discuss Empowering Next-Generation Applications through Flash Innovation.
• Panel discussions: The technology panel discussion, moderated by Gary Bronner, Sr. Vice President of Rambus Labs and Deputy Chief Technology Officer, will addressthe question, Memory & Logic Technology Divergence: Will AI/ML Bring Them Back Together?  The Circuits panel discussion is Human vs. Machine: The Future Role of AI/Machine Learning in Circuit Design, moderated by Chris Manglesdorf, Corporate Fellow at Analog Devices.There also will be a joint technology/circuits panel discussion with thought leaders looking back on the last 40 years of the electronics industry and trying to predict what lies ahead.  Moderated by Stephen Kosonocky, Senior Fellow at AMD, the panelists include Asad Abidi from UCLA; Akira Matsuzawa from Tokyo Institute of Technology; Charlie Sodini from M.I.T.; Naveen Verma from  Princeton University; and Tsu-Jae King Liu from University of California at Berkeley. • Luncheon talk: Hacker Andrew “bunnie” Huang will give a talk titled Do You Really Know What Is In Your Computer? Perspectives on Verifiable Supply Chains.  Huang is best known for hacking the Microsoft Xbox, as well as for his efforts in designing and manufacturing open source hardware, including the chumby (app-playing alarm clock), chibitronics (peel-and-stick electronics for craft), and Novena (DIY laptop). He received his PhD in EE from M.I.T. in 2002. He runs a private product design studio in Singapore, Kosagi, and mentors startups and students.