The 32nd Nordic Microelectronics Conference NORCHIP in Tampere on October 27-28 was co-located with the 16th International Symposium on System-on-Chip (SoC), taking place on October 28-29. Two tutorials related to these events were provided by the IEEE CAS Society Distinguished Lecturers. Prof. Ricardo Reis gave a tutorial on Physical Design Automation of Transistor Networks on Sunday October 26. Prof. Geza Kolumban lectured the other one on Monday October 27, entitled Software-Defined Electronics: a new research field for CAS Society. Both gentlemen were also keynote speakers in plenary sessions shared by the two conferences on the overlapping day, Tuesday October 28.
NORCHIP had also another two keynotes: Prof. Leena Ukkonen spoke about controlling artificial or paralyzed limbs by wireless links attached to the human brain, and Prof. Tor Sverre Lande introduced the concept of Constructive Noise. Also in SoC there were another couple of invited talks: Prof. Hank Hoffmann talked about Untapped Opportunities for Manycore Communication Optimization, whereas Vianney Lapôtre presented A Dynamically Reconfigurable Multi-ASIP Architecture for Multi-Standard and Multi-Mode Turbo Decoding.
Together the events attracted well over 100 people to Tampere, out of which about 80 were participating in NORCHIP and 45 in SoC. The engagement of these two conferences was so successful that the conferences decided to fully merge for next year and start circulating under a new (working) title Nordic Circuits and Systems Conference (NORCAS). This marriage will become more than the sum of these traditional events. According to the new Nordic math, 1 + 1 > 2, which will be proven for the first time in Oslo, Norway next October.