December 4, 201 – Next week the researchers and practitioners of the electron device world will be gathering in Washington D.C. for the 2011 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM). To quote the conference web front page: "IEDM is the world’s pre-eminent forum for reporting technological breakthroughs in the areas of semiconductor and electronic device technology, design, manufacturing, physics, and modeling. IEDM is the flagship conference for nanometer-scale CMOS transistor technology, advanced memory, displays, sensors, MEMS devices, novel quantum and nano-scale devices and phenomenology, optoelectronics, devices for power and energy harvesting, high-speed devices, as well as process technology and device modeling and simulation. The conference scope not only encompasses devices in silicon, compound and organic semiconductors, but also in emerging material systems."

From my perspective at Chipworks, focused on chips that have made it to production, it’s the conference where companies strut their technology, and post some of the research that may make it into real product in the next few years.

In the last few days I’ve gone through the advance program, and here are my picks of what I want to try and get to, in more or less chronological order. As usual there are overlapping sessions with interesting papers in parallel slots, but we’ll take the decision as to which to attend on the conference floor. For the first time the conference starts on the Saturday afternoon, with a set of six 90-minute tutorials on a range of leading-edge topics:

• Microresonator Filters and Oscillators: Technology and Applications, Roy H. Olsson III, Sandia
• Graphene Nanoelectronics, Walter De Heer, Georgia Tech
• Modeling and Characterization of Noise in Advanced CMOS, Andries Scholten, NXP
• Technology CAD for Modeling and Design of Bio-Devices, Yang Liu and Robert Dutton, Stanford University
• Kinetic Energy Harvesting – Technologies and Applications, Tomasz Zawada, Meggitt
• IGBT and Superjunction – Leading Power Device Technologies, Florin Udrea, University of Cambridge

The first three are from 2.45-4.15, and the remainder from 4.30-6.00. I won’t make it to any of them; dedicated nerd I may be, but I want at least some of my weekend!

On Sunday December 4th, we start with the short courses, "VLSI Technology Beyond 14nm Node" and "Advanced Memory Technology." Philip Wong of Stanford of has organised the former, and we have some impressive speakers: Jeff Sleight (IBM/Nanowires), Shinichi Takagi (U. Tokyo/High Mobility Materials), Alan Seabaugh (U/ Notre Dame/Tunnel FETs), Ian Young (Intel/MOSFET extrinsic R-C parasitics), and long-time attendee Bill Arnold (ASML/Lithography).

As I said last year, having started in the business on 10