Venue: Faculty Hall, Main Building, IISc Bangalore

Date: 17^th March 2017

Hosted by: MSD Lab & DESE

With desideratum of conducting ESD workshop last year and getting positive feedback resulted in its conduct once again. MSD Lab @ IISc Bangalore (India) and ESD Association (USA) envisioned this workshop so as to heighten and develop ESD design activities in India through this forum known as “India ESD Forum”. IEW highlights four-fold vision. First, to increase ESD awareness among engineers and academicians working in the field of VLSI Microelectronics and would like to learn or engage into ESD protection device/circuit/product design and testing activities. Second, to bring engineers together who encounter ESD problems in their designs. Third, to promote research, development and training related to on-chip ESD device/circuit design in India. Finally, the most prominent, to use this model to strengthen Academia-Industry partnership in and around country.

Prof. Mayank Shrivastava, IISc, commenced the workshop by giving a brief overview. Great interest being shown by VLSI professionals, industry professionals from semiconductor giants made this event a milestone. Compared to last year, more than 60 industry professionals from multinational corporations like SanDisk, Intel, NXP, Cadence, Infineon, and Synopsys engaged (Fig. 1). Also, intense student volunteer (about 20) and faculty member participation led to a smooth planning and administration of the workshop (Fig. 2). Riveting and thorough technical discussions and sessions pertaining to latest System Level/ IC Level ESD design issues were conducted. Unlike the previous IEW event, brainstorming sessions and contributed talks from the industry and student participants, prompted additional interest among the audience, and became the highlight of the 2^nd IEW workshop.

ESD experts Dr. Harald Gossner, and Dr. Wolfgang Stadler complemented the “Ask the Experts” session through teleconferencing. This led to an elaborated and enlightening talk which was presented via video teleconferencing system by Intel ESD expert, Dr. Harald Gossner, on SEED: System Efficient ESD Design. The event concluded with poster session, and feedbacks/suggestions for the future workshops (Fig. 3).

On the whole, it was a grand full- day event. The statistics clearly project its widespread recognition in the prevailing ESD society (Fig. 1). Looking at the inflating Academia-Industry participation compared to last year (2X hike), exponential growth of the IEW Forum can be undoubtedly forecasted. Aligning with the roadmap/feedbacks, the next workshop will be planned to have live Q/A sessions with the experts, engaging tutorials and focused topics/presentations outlined for a condensed event.

Fig. 1: Visuals from the workshop

Fig. 2: Company wise distribution of participants.

Fig. 3: Feedbacks and Suggestions.