NorCAS history

The IEEE NorCAS conference is the main circuits and systems event of the Nordic countries representing both academia as well as electronics industry. The IEEE NorCAS conference is a merge of the well-established conferences NORCHIP and the International Symposium on System-on-Chip (SoC). The conference covers a wide range of topics within circuits and systems in digital, analog and mixed domains. From the beginning, NorCAS has been financially co-sponsored by the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society and endorsed by its VLSI Systems and Applications technical committee (VSATC).

IEEE NorCAS locations:

1st 2015 in Oslo
2nd 2016 in Copenhagen
3rd 2017 in Linköping
4th 2018 in Tallinn
5th 2019 in Helsinki
6th 2020 virtual (Oslo)
7th 2021 virtual (Oslo)
8th 2022 in Oslo

The Nordic Circuits and Systems Conference is based on two successful conferences, NORCHIP (since 1983) and SoC (since 1999). Following a co-organized NORCHIP/SoC Conference in 2014 the first joint NORCAS conference was organized in 2015.

NORCHIP History

On the initiative of the professors Ole Olesen and Christer Svensson from Technical University of Denmark and Linköping University respectively and with support from NORDFORSK  NORCHIP was formed in 1981 as a Nordic Multi Project Chip organization.

The very first run was processed in 1982 with ten designs originating from research groups in Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway. Until 1989 92 process runs were completed with more than 2000 designs originating from academia and enterprises.

In 1988, the CEC launched a call for tenders to select a consortium to serve European universities for a number of services including multi project chip fabrication. As a result, the EUROCHIP organization was set up including NORCHIP, CMP from France, the German National Research Center for Computer Science (GMD), the Inter-University Center for Microelectronics (IMEC) in Belgium, and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in the UK. Later, EUROCHIP issued a call for tenders towards vendors in 1989, and the service started in 1990.

From 1990 NORCHIP continued the conferences as a Nordic forum for the presentation and discussions of recent advances in design and prototyping of VLSI circuits and systems. The conference brought together experts and leaders from industry and academia to exchange ideas, concepts and results of design, verification, prototyping and testing of VLSI circuits and systems.

1st        1983 in Copenhagen
2nd       1984 in Stockholm
3rd        1985 in Copenhagen
4th        1986 in Helsinki
5th        1987 in Trondheim
6th        1988 in Copenhagen
7th        1989 in Stockholm
8th        1990 in Lund
9th        1991 in Copenhagen
10th      1992 in Helsinki
11th      1993 in Trondheim
12th      1994 in Gothenburg
13th      1995 in Copenhagen
14th      1996 in Helsinki
15th      1997 in Tallinn
16th      1998 in Lund
17th      1999 in Oslo
18th      2000 in Turku
19th      2001 in Stockholm
20th      2002 in Copenhagen
21st       2003 in Riga
22nd     2004 in Oslo
23rd      2005 in Oulu
24th      2006 in Linköping
25th      2007 in Aalborg
26th      2008 in Tallinn
27th      2009 in Trondheim
28th      2010 in Tampere
29th      2011 in Lund
30th      2012 in Copenhagen
31st      2013 in Vilnius
32nd     2014 in Tampere (jointly with SoC Symposium)

From 1986-89 in the conference was jointly organized with the Nordic Silicon Compiler Project (NORSILC) established as a spin-off from NORCHIP.

Since 1992 a special issue of the Kluwer journal (now Springer) on Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing has been published with selected papers from NORCHIP.

Since 2002 selected digital papers have been published in scientific journals. The journal currently used is Embedded Hardware Design (MICPRO) published by Elsevier.

From 1996 NORCHIP achieved the IEEE Region 8 label and from 2005 it was technically supported by IEEE through the Circuits and Systems Society (CASS) and consequently all papers were listed on IEEE Xplore.

In 1997 the conference was for the first time organized outside the Nordic countries in Tallinn and since then the Baltic States have been integrated in the conference.

The NORCHIP Board members over time include:
Ole Olesen, DTH (chair 1981-1991)
Lars Philipson, LTH
Oddvar Aaserud, NTH
Odd Rønning, Nordic VLSI
Helena Pohjonen, VTT
Veikko Porra, HUT
Ole Olsen, AAU
Peter Nord, LTH
Einar J. Aas, NTH
Hannu Tenhunen, KTH (Chair 1991-2007)
Erik Bruun, DTU
Kari Halonen, HUT
Tor S. Lande, UiO (Chair 2007- )
Jiren Yuan, LTH
Jan Madsen, DTU
Jari Nurmi, TUT
Lars Wanhammar, LiTH
Peeter Ellervee, TTU
Viktor Öwall, LTH
Atila Alvandpour, LiTH

Since 1985 the conference secretariat was run by Ivan Ring Nielsen, Technoconsult.

The International Symposium on System-on-Chip (SoC ) history

SoC was an annual symposium held at Tampere, Finland – The SoC City. It builds on the tradition of a series of SoC events organized annually since 1999. The mission of SoC is to provide a forum that is fully and comprehensively dedicated to SoC issues.

The event is based on a balanced mixture of:

–  world-class invited presentations
–  exhibition of state-of-the-art commercial technology
–  contributed paper track (since 2003)
–  special sessions (since 2013)
–  industrial paper track
–  panel discussion
–  tutorial course (since 2001)

The main organizer for the event is Tampere University of Technology, Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering in cooperation with timely research activities of the field. Since 2003 the event has had technical co-sponsorship by the Circuits and Systems Society of IEEE.