First Multicores & EDAC,
and then IEDM & ISSCC ...

** The Multicore Association – has been founded. If you want to learn more about it, there's a meeting on November 30th from 9 AM to 5 PM in Santa Clara, CA.

Per organizers: "The new group is an outgrowth of meetings among chip vendors, semiconductor IP providers, as well as RTOS, compiler, and development-tool vendors that have been ongoing since May. Its focus will be on nonproprietary implementations where products from multiple vendors must work together."

EEMBC President Markus Levy further defines the scope of The Multicore Association's domain as "implementations that use two or more processing elements. These include, but are not limited to, heterogeneous and homogeneous multiprocessor systems, coprocessors, and hardware accelerators."

The agenda for November 30th will include discussions in three workgroups that have already formed around the issues of the multitasking and communication API, the debug API, and the Transparent Inter Process Communication (TIPC) protocol. Good Stuff – go!

** EDAC IP Panel – It's going to take place at The Tech Mart in Santa Clara on November 30th starting at 6 PM.

Moderated by EETimes' Ron Wilson, the panel will include RBC Capital Markets' Christian Falk, Aprio's Mike Gianfagna, Telos Venture Partners' Jim Hogan, Lanza TechVentures Lucio Lanza, and ARM's Mark Templeton.

EDAC says the panel is important: "EDA and IP companies are constantly challenged to generate value for their investors and shareholders. This challenge is magnified by today’s tight economy where customers are scrutinizing their R&D expenditures. Our panel will examine generating value both from an investment and an operational point of view."

Register now and they'll save a glass of wine for you.

** IEDM 2005 will unfold at the Hilton Hotel in Washington D.C. from December 5th to the 7th.

This IEEE conference is the granddaddy of the electron device conferences – scientific, sophisticated and seminal. Researchers from academia and industry are always there in force, showcasing the latest and greatest of today and tomorrow.

Per the organizers: "Over the last 51 years, the IEEE/IEDM has been the world's primary forum for reporting breakthroughs in the broadest cross-section of technology, design, manufacturing, physics and the modeling of semiconductors and other electronic devices. Topics range from deep-submicron CMOS transistors and memories, to novel displays and imagers, from compound semiconductor materials to nanotechnology devices and architectures, from micromachined devices to smart-power technologies, etc."

This year's program will include tutorials on Sunday, and Monday keynotes from STMicro's Benedetto Vigna discussing "More than Moore", Stanford/Rambus' Mark Horowitz discussing "Scaling, Power & the Future of CMOS", and Toshiba/SED's Kouji Suzuki discussing "Past & Future of Information Displays".

The Tuesday lunchtime talk will come from MIT's Neil Gershenfeld discussing "Bits & Atoms", and the panel discussions on Tuesday evening will cover the scaling of non-volatile memories and who's paying for semiconductor R&D.

Clearly, you should be attending IEDM – register now!

** ISSCC 2006 will be happening at the Marriott Hotel in San Francisco from February 4th to the 9th.

This IEEE conference is the granddaddy of the solid-state circuit conferences – like IEDM, it's also scientific, sophisticated and seminal. Researchers from academia and industry are also there in force, reporting on this past year and predicting for this next year and beyond.

Here's how the ISSCC organizers describe their event: "The International Solid-State Circuits Conference is the foremost global forum for presentation of advances in solid-state circuits and Systems-on-a-Chip. The Conference offers a unique opportunity for engineers working at the cutting edge of IC design to maintain technical currency, and to network with leading experts."

The ISSCC 2006 program will include tutorials on Sunday, and a plethora of sessions, keynotes, and panels on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Topics will cover everything from the death of the digital circuit designer, to emerging technologies, tiny process technologies, to biochips, transceivers, processors, and memory – non-volatile and otherwise.

San Francisco is marvelous, the conference is huge, and you've got lots to learn – why haven't you registered yet?