Engineering Faculty’s EnICS Lab Hosts Semiconductor Conference

“We only opened a year ago, but it’s not too early to celebrate what our lab has accomplished,” says founding EnICS director Prof. Alexander Fish, who today oversees the group’s wide-ranging operations together with two additional senior members of the Engineering faculty, Prof. Yossie Shor and Dr. Adam Teman. “This conference is a great illustration of how EnICS is making important research advances, while at the same time, developing significant practical collaborations with leaders of the worldwide semiconductor industry.”

The Faculty of Engineering conference was also associated with imec – a Belgium-based nanoelectronics company and research institution.

“Every year, imec sponsors ITF – its invitation-only Technology Forum that is one of the year’s most important semiconductor events,” says Dr. Teman, adding that he and his colleagues conceived of their conference as an ‘afterglow’ event for the imec gathering, held in Israel for the first time this year. “The scheduling allowed us secure attendance by a large number of top researchers and business leaders, which made our conference a very exciting experience.”

The EnICS conference included sessions devoted to the Internet of Things (IoT), Hardware Security, and the Future of Memories. A breathtaking lecture about hardware security, paved the way for a panel of Israeli and world experts on this critical issue, led by Dr. Osnat Keren. The conference also featured a lively panel of semiconductor professionals from Israel whose technology start-ups were acquired by international companies.  This “Mergers and Acquisitions” panel was moderated by Orly Tory, CEO of BIRAD.

“The atmosphere at the conference was special, in that it’s rare to get so many experts – from the technical side and from the world of business – together in the same room,” says Dr. Teman. “Participants included top executives from Intel in the USA, and TSMC – the world’s largest dedicated chip foundry, located in Taiwan.  We also received generous corporate sponsorship from imec, Marvell, Ehrlich & Spencer, Keysight, and IATI, who all sent representatives and took booths at the conference.”

The event also provided an opportunity to introduce conference attendants to the EnICS team and its accomplishments.  Despite being relatively new, EnICS has already made key contributions in system on chip (SoC) design, high speed digital integrated circuits, energy efficient embedded memories and memory architectures, hardware security, cutting-edge analog circuit design, CMOS image sensors and design with emerging technologies.

“EnICS is working with more than 30 companies and research groups around the globe,” says Prof. Fish. “The conference was a great way to encourage even wider collaboration, in service of our overall goal: to advance chip design so that specially-adapted chips can become the ‘engine’ behind future concepts, devices and products.”