Joachim N. Burghartz, Michiel Steyaert, Cor Claeys
FIGURE 1. The logo of the first merged conference meeting ESSERC 2024 in Bruges.
In 1971, the first European Solid-State Device Research Conference (ESSDERC) conference was organized in Munich, Germany, aiming to present the latest developments in the physics, technology, and characterization of solid-state devices, bringing together both the academic world and industry active on silicon and compound semiconductor integrated circuits. ESSDERC solicits papers in fields such as advanced devices, process and integration, telecommunication and power devices, modeling and simulation, characterization and reliability, memory, SoC and SIP, emerging technologies, and sensors and actuators. Originally, only short abstracts were published, and afterward, selected papers were published in Revue de Physique Appliqué (Paris, France). Starting from the 1987 conference in Bologna, Italy, the short abstracts were no longer published, but rather, proceedings with four-page manuscripts became available to the participants. Due to an agreement with IEEE, afterwards, all abstracts until 1987 and, thereafter, the proceedings became available in IEEE Xplore.
In 1975, the initiative was taken to launch a sister conference, the European Solid-State Circuits Conference (ESSCIRC), focusing on recent advances in design concepts, design methodologies, circuit simulation, and solid-state circuits. Basic topics such as analog circuits, digital circuits, RF and communication circuits, mixed-signal circuits and microsystems, and date converters were addressed. The first conference took place in Canterbury, U.K. Also, for ESSCIRC, all abstracts and proceedings are available in IEEE Xplore, while selected papers are annually published in a dedicated edition of IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC). This conference became known as the key circuit conference in Europe attended by participants from all over the world.
Initially, both annual conferences were organized in different weeks in September and in different European cities. Each conference included keynote, invited, and contributed papers, selected by separate Technical Program Committees but coordinated by a joint Steering Committee. Due to the general need for a stronger interaction among technologists, device experts, and circuit designers, in 2002, it was decided to colocate the two conferences and organize them at the same time and at the same location. This initiative and the new format were first worked out by Prof. Giorgio Baccarani from Bologna University (ESSDERC conference chair) and Prof. Rinaldo Castello from Pavia University (ESSCIRC conference chair) for Florence as the conference location. There were three joint keynote presentations.
The delegates had to register for one of the two conferences, i.e., ESSDERC or ESSCIRC, to select one of the proceedings for free but were allowed and encouraged to attend any of the parallel sessions. The conferences were technically sponsored by IEEE, i.e., by the IEEE Electron Devices Society (EDS) for ESSDERC and the IEEE Solid-State Circuit Society (SSCS) for ESSCIRC, respectively. The format, which is also used for the IEEE VLSI conferences, turned out to be very successful, and over the years, more joint presentations and joint sessions were organized. Since 2017, both ESSDERC and ESSCIRC became IEEE financially sponsored conferences, supported by EDS and SSCS, respectively. The conference proceedings are published in IEEE Xplore. Selected papers are published afterward in IEEE Journal of the Electron Devices Society or JSSC, respectively.
FIGURE 2. The historical evolvement of ESSDERC and ESSCIRC, first as individual and independent conferences and then as colocated conferences, and from 2024 on, the 50th anniversary of both conferences as the new single conference ESSERC.
Since the last decade, there has been a worldwide trend toward education, academic research, and industrial development while strengthening the link between device technology and circuit design. This is due to the world becoming more application driven, with a need to start from the system level and work down to circuit design and device technology. Designers and technologists have to closely collaborate, and both disciplines and skills have to go hand in hand to achieve optimal results. To cope with this important trend, the ESSDERC-ESSCIRC Steering Committee (EStC) recently decided to reorganize the ESSDERC and ESSCIRC conferences into a single conference format under a new name.
The last ESSDERC-ESSCIRC conference will take place in Lisbon, Portugal, on 11–14 September 2023. The new “European Solid-State Electronics Research Conference – ESSERC” is scheduled for Bruges, Belgium, 9–12 September 2024. The historical link with both ESSDERC and ESSCIRC remains and is also reflected in the new logo (see Figure 1) and the fact that the conference in Bruges will be referenced as the 50th ESSERC Conference (see Figure 2). ESSERC will have a single Technical Program Committee, a coordinating Steering Committee, a conference chair and cochair, and three track chairs, i.e., one for circuits, one for technologies, and one for a Joint Track. The new website for ESSERC is www.esserc.org.
Joachim N. Burghartz
Chair, EStC
Michiel Steyaert
Cochair, EStC
Cor Claeys
Secretary, EStC
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MED.2023.3262079
Date of current version: 28 June 2023