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NTU Takes the Crowning Glory Again
from the IEEE 2009 International Solid State Circuits Conference

Starting from 2005, NTU had the largest number of theses presented at IEEE's (Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers) ISSCC( International Solid State Circuits Conference) for five successive years. The 2009 ISSCC will be held from February 8th to 12th in San Francisco this year. This conference is an important indicator of the advanced trends in R & D as well as the mainstream developments of the semiconductor industry. NTU stunned the global academia with its extraordinary performance.

The ISSCC 2009 held separate regional press conferences in Japan, Taiwan, Korea and mainland China from November 25th to December 1st last year. A total of 204 academic papers were selected for presentation at the 2009 ISSCC, of which Taiwan had 18, occupying 9%. NTU has 10 papers selected for presentation at ISSCC 2009, topping the global academia.

Although NTU's outstanding performance is largely attributable to the joint efforts of our faculty and students, the staunch support from the semiconductor industries of Taiwan also plays a pivotal role. From ISSCC 2007 onwards, the NTU papers were mostly the research achievements of the "NTU/Mediatek Wireless Research Lab"and the "TSMC University Shuttle Program."Of the 10 papers selected for ISSCC 2009 from NTU, 6 came from the "NTU/Mediatek Wireless Reseach Lab"and 4 came from the TSMC University Shuttle Program.

The majority of NTU papers selected for presentation at ISSCC 2009 had to do with cabled transmission, and the topics ranged from 65 nanometer high frequency Phase Locked Loop technology, 65 nanometer process leakage current suppression techniques, 130 GHz frequency dividers, 20 Gbps full rate linear time clock data recovery to ultra low noise clock generator and millimeter multi-mode frequency dividers. In addition, in the wireless area, NTU papers had to do with system on chips for 60 GHz transceivers, and in the digital area the papers were about HDTV image encoders and bio-medical digital processors as well as system on chips for medical transmissions. The theme of ISSCC 2009 centers around "Adaptive Circuits and Systems,"and the discussions will be focused on exploring the continual progress made by the semiconductor industry in the field of nanotechnology, as can be seen from digital processing, data storage, to micro power consumption and wireless communication systems. As the result of these technical breakthroughs, the complexity of related electronic circuitry keeps increasing. With the growing popularity of integrated system on chips in recent years, the number of transistors in a single SOC could very well amount to more than 1 billion after all the sub-circuits are integrated. In today's world where energy conservation is of paramount importance, whether consideration should be given to low power consumption, reliability, or the adjustments between the subsystems, the framework of adaptive circuits and systems will be able to provide operational parameter which can dynamically adjust the integrated chips at any time to achieve the best performance and the lowest power consumption.

As the technology of nano-circuitry continues to mature, there are many technical difficulties that need to be overcome, such as enhancing the ability of digital circuits to handle complexity issues, using digital circuit loop to dynamically control high standard analog circuits and dynamically controlling and integrating the radio frequency interface circuits, etc. In view of these, the contributors of papers to ISSCC need to demonstrate their ability in providing relevant adaptive circuits and systems, while at the same time strive towards developing new systems in the hope of making valuable contributions to the evolution of human living.

Chinese version