Introduction from the First European Solid-State Circuits Conference Chairman

Abstract

IN THE early 1970’s,a feeling had been growing in Europe that an annual international meeting, covering roughly the same sort of ground as the IEEE Philadelphia SolidState Circuits Conference (ISSCC), would provide a valuable regional forum for the presentation and discussion of recent advances in solid-state circuits. Already a successful annual European Solid-State Device Research Conference (ESSDERC) had been launched which was concerned largely with the physics and technology of discrete devices, and a complementary conference dealing with solid-state devices in their circuit context was being envisaged. A Steering Committee of interested European parties was consequently formed in 1974 in order to coordinate the ESSDERC meetings with the new proposed circuit one. The plan that emerged was for a circuit meeting entitled the European Solid-State Circuits Conference (ESSCIRC) which was to be held close in time to the device meeting, but the two meetings would be hosted by different countries in any year. The Institution of Electrical Engineers of the United Kingdom was chosen to organize the first ESSCIRC meeting since it already had plans in preparation at that time for a smaller solid-state circuits meeting in the U.K. in 1975, the scale of which was subsequently enlarged. The meeting was held on the campus of the University of Kent at Canterbury from September 2-5, 1975 and this year the 1976 meeting will be held from September21 -24 at Toulouse, France. In scope, ESSCIRC is similar to ISSCC with perhaps only one important difference, namely, that microwave circuits are intentionally excluded since they come within the domain of the European Microwave Conference, again normally held every September. There are inevitably some areas of overlap between the ESSCIRC and ESSDERC meetings, and a few papers submitted to one will more rightly come within the scope of the other. In order to ensure exchange of such papers, both conferences have similar closing dates for submission of abstracts (circa beginning of May) and the two Program Committees each year work in close cooperation. The 1975 Canterbury Conference was divided into 18 sessions, 7 of these being devoted to invited papers on CAD, current development in digital integrated circuits, IC’S in consumer systems, electronics in the motor vehicle environment, MOS RAM’s, CCD’S, and LSI in telecommunications, respectively. Some 104 contributed papers were also presented. Two-page abstracts of both the invited and contributed papers are available in the conference proceedings, available from the IEE, London.1 The number of delegates attending the meeting was just in excess of 200, half from within the U.K. and the remainder from the 16 other countries represented. The biggest overseas delegation came from The Netherlands (31), with 8 from North America. Considering that this was the first meeting and that at the time many companies were operating with stringent travel budgets, the initial hope that a viable meeting could be launched in Europe appears to have been vindicated so far.