IEDM 2007, Washington, DC

Today is the last day of IEDM 2007 and I am waiting to check out from Club Ouarters and make my way to Atlanta, GA, for a visit to Georgia Tech. Though I saw Jim Meindl at IEDM, I didn't get a chance to talk to him. If you trace the lineage, he is at the very top of my academic family tree. It is:

JMeindl -> KSaraswat -> RReif -> CSTan

So I am certainly very honored to be part of this chain.

A few highlights:

- flight SQ26 was delayed for 1.5 hrs due to technical issues with the aircraft and a replacement was made. But we made it in JFK just on time nevertheless;
- at JFK I went through the special registration procedures again and was the last one to collect my baggage;

IEDM highlights:
- I took a shortcourse on Nanotech/Nanoelectronis - I liked the one given by del Alamo on 3-5 CS for logic applications, and enjoyed Lieber's talk on NWs (the assembly approaches he talked about were intriguing);
- I didn't really enjoy the rest of the 3 talks;
- The CMOS performance boosters course seemed interesting;
- There is true 3D paper to the best of my knowledge (and a few are related in some ways). Takafumi invited me to visit his lab in Tohoku if I made it to 3-D SIC (will see);
- There was a session on energy harvesting and a great talk on Si PV was given;
- met many big names and old faces (there is a strong MIT presence here, I think MTL must be empty during this week). MTL-ers include: DAA, JHoyt, JdelAlamo, Tayo, Duane (didn't talk to him), Gene, Vicky, Chang-Lee (LL), Ali, John, Liang, Niamh, DH Kim, Charles C, Tony, JFiorenza, etc;
- had a one-on-one with Tayo and he bought me wine (first time);
- The GOLD seminar was great so was the dinner. Was great to meet Janice and John Kymissys;
- NUS and IME did very well. How about NTU?
- at the panel session, DAA at the closing remark, based on show of hand (question: would FETs remain in gadgets in 2030?), concluded jokingly "FETs has a bright future, and there is plenty of room at the top to integrate on Si". I liked this line. I first used this line at my PhD thesis defense on Nov 14, 2005 based on a talk Feynman gave in 1984. Great, now it is official!

What happened in DC remain DC. I look forward to IEDM 2008 in Bay Area and hope to contribute in IEDM 2009 in DC. Hope this is an ahievable goal.

So long.

Wednesday, Dec 12, 2007 10:51AM, Washington, DC