The International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) is one of, if not the premier conference for semiconductor process technology. The 2015 meeting just finished up on Wednesday, December 9th.
This year’s meeting was held from Saturday, December 5[SUP]th[/SUP] through Wednesday, December 9[SUP]th[/SUP] in Washington DC. As a side note the conference has historically alternated years between Washington DC and San Francisco but after this year will be held exclusively in San Francisco. Basically with the so much of the semiconductor industry now located in the Far East attendance is better when the conference is in San Francisco.
I find the conference to be very helpful in terms of understanding the latest process technologies. Not only is the conference very good but there are a lot of side events held around it during lunch and the evenings.
Saturday
A series of six tutorials was held although I didn’t attend any of them.
Sunday
On Sunday there were two all day short course, one on CMOS for 5nm and beyond and the other on memory technology. I attended the memory technology seminar and I will blog about that in a subsequent blog.
Sunday night CEA-Leti and IMEC each held technology forums. I attended the IMEC forum and I will blog about that. I am also trying to set up a briefing from LETI on their recent work and if that comes about I will blog about that as well.
Monday
Monday opened the conference technical session with the plenary session. I will blog about Greg Yeric’s excellent address on Moore’s Law at 50 in a follow on blog.
At lunch on Monday I attended the press luncheon. General attendance for the conference this year is expected to be around 1,400 with 365 attendees for the tutorials and 505 attendees for the short courses. There were also two luncheons and they were expected to be sold out. Both David Lamers and myself asked about Platform CMOS papers and industrial participation. In general our impressions are that the conference has become more academic and less industrial practice oriented. The organizers felt that has been steady since 2005. They did agree that before 2005 there were more “platform” papers and they attributed that to consolidation. There was also a feeling that platform papers tended to be every other year now.
Monday afternoon I got a briefing from Global Foundries on their 22FDX technology and I will be blogging about that.
Micron and Intel presented their floating gate 3D NAND technology Monday afternoon and I will likely blog about that paper as well.
Tuesday
The conference continued on Tuesday with more technical papers. I am still organizing my thoughts on Tuesday’s papers but I will likely blog about what I saw.
Tuesday night I attended Coventor’s “the last half nanometer” panel discussion and I will blog about that.
Wednesday
The conference wrapped up Wednesday. There were a couple of excellent DRAM papers from Samsung and SK Hynix and I will blog about them plus possibly some other papers from Wednesday.
Wednesday at lunch I attended ASM’s luncheon where Dino Triyoso from Global Foundries presented. Unfortunately I was asked not to blog about that event.
Conclusion
IEDM 2015 was another excellent and informative conference. I will follow up this blog with approximately 8 or more blogs on what I saw.
Intel and the IFS Dilemma: Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place – Should They attempt to Sell Intel Foundry Services