Summer destinations and on into fall ...

** Semicon West 2005 – You'll want to book your trip to San Francico and San Jose right now, so you don't miss a bit of the biggest semiconductor celebration on the face of the planet. It's happening this year from July 12 to July 17th. Despite earlier postings, this year's event is taking place for the entire week at Moscone Center in San Francsico. Don't even pretend to claim you're in any sector of the semiconductor industry unless you're absolutely planning on coming to the front end or the back end of this mega-event.

** HOT Chips 17 – The upcoming conference on August 14th to 16th will be held once again on the lovely campus of Stanford University.

Conference organizers say: "Since it started in 1989, HOT Chips has been known as one of the semiconductor industry's leading conference on high-performance microprocessors and related integrated circuits. The conference is held once a year in August on the Stanford University campus in the center of the world's capital of electronics activity, Silicon Valley. The conference emphasis this year, as in previous years, is on real products and realizable technology."

** 2005 EDA Tech Forum - Mentor Graphics, as well as Altera, Artisan/ARM, Chartered Semiconductor, The Mathworks, VSIA, and Accellera will be sponsoring this series of conferences in the coming months. Organizers say that each conference will include: "Technical sessions and hands-on self-paced workshops [that] address real-life design issues in IC nanometer design, functional verification, integrated system design, and emerging technologies, with presenters from [sponsoring] companies." All told, 18 conferences are scheduled for various venues worldwide in 2005 including: Dallas, Texas; Phoenix, Boston, San Jose, Ottawa, Dresden, Reading, Paris, Penang, Bangalore, Delhi, Beijing, Shanghai, Hsinchu, Seoul, Tokyo, and Kyoto." Oh my - get out that atlas!

** IMEC CALIT International School Events – IMEC has announced their new Center for Advanced Learning in Information Technologies (CALIT) as a platform for high-level events and training programs that focus on visionary and interdisciplinary themes. Here are som events you might consider attending in Leuven, Belgium:

The first two meetings took place in May. The third symposium, scheduled for September 1st, will address the convergence of nanometer-scale sciences and the methods needed to bridge the gap between manmade and biological systems through nanotechnology. At this event, experts will discuss what can be realistically expected from this convergence and how society should prepare for the impact of this new technology.

** CDNLive! Silicon Valley – This conference will be hosted by the new Cadence User Group, "The Cadence Designer Network," and will be taking place September 12th to the 14th. Organizers say this is a "customer-driven technical forum that gives you the opportunity to interact with other designers-and with the Cadence engineers who develop the technologies you use." You should probably registering now and entering it into your calendar in ink.

** Denali MemCon 2005 – Organizers say this is "the industry's premier event for leading-edge trends in the business and technology of semiconductor memory, storage, and chip-to-chip communications." Each event includes keynotes, panel discussions, and more. Upcoming dates include MemCon Tokyo on September 15th and 16th at the Tokyo Conference Center, and MemCon San Jose on October 12th and 13th at the Westin Santa Clara.

** SAME 2005 is inviting you to submit a paper to their upcoming 2005 conference, to be held in the Science Technological Park of Sophia Antipolis, France on October 5th and 6th. Organizers says this year, the main topic for the forum will be System in Package & System on Chip. Of course there are other categories as well, so you should be checking out the website and figuring out where to position your work.

** ISoC – The 3rd International System-on-Chip Conference and Exhibition will be held November 1st and 2nd in Newport Beach, CA. Organizers say the theme for the conference will be "SoC in Wireless Applications." They also say, "Track & Session presenters, keynote speakers, and panel members who can contribute their professional expertise have a wonderful opportunity to share their innovative SoC technology/products at this event with a very focused and targeted audience."

** ICCAD-2005 will be held at the DoubleTree Hotel in San Jose from November 6th to the 10th. This is one of the 'real' conferences – real engineering, real science, real stuff. Please note that organizers say that this year, "in addition to traditional CAD topics, ICCAD has expanded its focus to include innovative design technologies for devices, circuits, and systems."