IEEE NorCAS
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. Following a co-organized NORCHIP/SoC Conference in 2014, the first joint NORCAS conference was organized in 2015. From the beginning, IEEE Circuits and Systems Society has co-sponsored NorCAS.
The previous editions as IEEE NorCAS were:
1st 2015 in Oslo
2nd 2016 in Copenhagen
3rd 2017 in Linköping
4th 2018 in Tallinn
So, the IEEE Nordic Circuits and Systems Conference is based on two successful conferences, NORCHIP (since 1983) and SoC (since 1999). In the following a brief history of both.
SoC History
The International Symposium on System-on-Chip (SoC) was an annual symposium held in Tampere, Finland – The SoC City. It builded on the tradition of a series of SoC events organized annually since 1999. The mission of SoC was to provide a forum that is fully and comprehensively dedicated to SoC issues.
The event was 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 was Tampere University of Technology, Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering in cooperation with timely research activities of the field. Since 2003 the event had technical co-sponsorship by the Circuits and Systems Society of IEEE. Prof. Jari Nurmi was the General Chair for the whole SoC history 1999-2014.
Over the years, more than 100 invited speakers and thousands of participants were hosted by SoC. More details on the event history at soc.cs.tut.fi.
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 are 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
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.