Today, the mutual optimization of design and technology provide key advantage in the highly competitive semiconductor market. Traditionally, when developing integrated circuits (IC), their design and technology were considered and developed separately. Looking to the future, this is no longer appropriate.

For the 18th time, the “International Conference on IC Design and Technology (ICICDT)” provided a forum for engineers, researchers, graduate students and professors to cross the boundary between design and technology .It provides an important international platform for interaction and collaboration of IC design and technology and is sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

The organizer of this year’s ICICDT, which for the first time was held in a virtual format from September 15 to 17, was the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS in Dresden, Germany. “We are proud to have hosted this year’s ICICDT,” says Fraunhofer IPMS deputy institute director and conference co-chair Dr. Wenke Weinreich. “Even though we were unable to welcome the total of around 90 international guests in person due to the pandemic situation, exciting lectures and workshops awaited the participants, offering plenty of room for interaction and exchange.”

The one-day tutorial program on plasma-induced damage, GaN power devices, neuromorphic computing for edge AI, and large-scale silicon photonic MEMS switches was followed by two days of technical presentations and workshops. An entertaining social program accompanied the conference, including a virtual city tour around Dresden.

Rui Shao presenting his work which was awarded with the “Best Student Paper” award.

The “Best Student Paper” award was presented to Rui Shao. His publication dealt with the topic “Robust Training of Optical Neural Network with Practical Errors using Genetic Algorithm: A Case Study in Silicon-on-Insulator-Based Photonic Integrated Chips”.

The next ICICDT will be held in 2023.

Report by Dr. Wenke Weinreich