Winter 1996

In This Issue

Lam Research Corporation of Fremont, California has joined CIS as its newest partner company. Dr. Alexander Voshchenkov, Lam's vice president of research & development and chief technical officer, will serve on the CIS Advisory Committee.

Lam is a leading supplier of wafer processing equipment to the worldwide semiconductor industry. The company's broad product offerings are focused on etch and deposition, two of the most vital steps in the fabrication of current and future integrated circuits. Lam is the leading plasma etch equipment supplier and ranks among the top five suppliers in the global semiconductor equipment market. It recently became the first equipment firm to achieve annual sales in excess of $1 billion in a single equipment product segment. More than one quarter of Lam's facilities are dedicated to advanced research and process development, including a 170,000 square foot state-of-the-art R&D facility housing over 70,000 square feet of class cleanroom-related space. Next-door, a new 117,000 engineering facility is under construction and scheduled for completion in the spring.

According to Voshchenkov, becoming a full member of CIS will enable Lam to work closely with one of the world's leading academic centers for semiconductor research. Lam's future depends in large part on the availability of highly skilled engineers and scientists with expertise in both chemical process, materials, system hardware, process control, and software disciplines to help us develop the advanced semiconductor equipment tools our worldwide customer base requires for production of future generations of semiconductor devices. Lam recognizes the innovation and consistent excellence of programs at CIS which serve as an invaluable resource for advanced process technology development.

Roger Emerick, Lam's chairman and Chief executive officer, added that "innovation, evolution, and collaboration are the three principles which guide Lam, and which have enabled us to thrive. We are looking forward to being able to work closely with Stanford's Center for Integrated Systems as a full member. CIS has already had a tremendous impact on our industry through its research efforts and through the contributions its graduates are making today at Lam."

Rick Reis, CIS executive director echoed Emerick's comments and added, "CIS' efforts to recruit the best graduate students into Stanford, coupled with the education they receive while affiliated with the center, insures the continuing production of graduates of great value to Lam and our other Partner companies."

"We are pleased Stanford has chosen Lam's next-generation etch equipment to play a key role in its future electronics research programs," Emerick said, referring to Lam's donation of state-of-the-art etch equipment, worth more than one million dollars, to CIS.

The equipment donation to CIS was coordinated through Tina Sankoff, vice president of Lam's Corporate Community Relations & Education Department. "We look for opportunities to contribute to educational programs aimed at stimulating student and faculty exploration into technological challenges our industry faces," Sankoff stated.

Lam Chief Technical Officer Dr. Alexander Voshchenkov shows the semiconductor industry's first 300 mm (12-inch) silicon wafers containing production-quality films of Tantalum-Pentoxide (Ta2O5), the most likely storage capacitor for 256 megabit and 1 gigabit dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips.

Since its founding in 1980, Lam has provided front-end processing solutions for the global semiconductor industry. Lam's current product line spans three generations of production requirements, including the next-generation 9000 series of advanced etch and CVD tools for production applications ranging from 0.5-to-0.25 micron. Lam currently employs more than 4,000 people worldwide, and maintains customer support centers at more than 30 sites throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia/Pacific to support local customers.

Lam's commitment to customer support has enabled the company to rank among the Ten Best equipment companies in customer satisfaction for seven straight years, according to the annual customer satisfaction survey sponsored by VLSI Research Inc., a market research company located in Silicon Valley. Lam has received numerous achievement awards, including SEMATECH's Total Quality Award. Lam was also the first recipient of the IBM Technology Product Division's Customer Satisfaction Award and the National Semiconductor RAVE Award. In 1995, Lam received a Certificate of Recognition from the United States Department of Commerce's Office of Technology Policy recognizing Lam for its efforts to meet the competitive challenges of the global economy and for demonstrating a commitment to excellence and innovation.

WELCOME LAM RESEARCH CORPORATION !

It's been said that "change is the only thing that's constant." The New Year of 1996 at Stanford has opened with the shuffling of boxes, as members of Computer Sciences and Computer Systems move into the Gates Building, and the ongoing pounding of hammers as the extension to the CIS building nears completion. Many of the changes in the organizations and interactions among the departments, laboratories and faculty have been outlined in the last newsletter. In reality, the impact of these changes will continue to evolve throughout this academic year and next. Hence, I will save any further discussion of these matters for the Spring newsletter.

I would like to use this opportunity to summarize perspective gained from a one-quarter sabbatical during the Fall, which included visits to several Partner companies and international conferences that took me to both Europe and Asia. During the course of these interactions it became clearer than ever before the global interdependence of both technology and economic development. In this context, it also became clear that international academic institutions have a key role to play as repositories of both basic and applied research. Rather than trying to generalize on this theme however, I would like to give a few specific examples from my travels and then to summarize.

Bob Dutton and Armin Wieder (Siemens)

Siemens Connections---

In early September I visited Siemens and had a chance to present results on our "21st Century Semiconductors" research program, including the paradigm shifts in new applications of internet collaboration for technology development. Dr. Armin Wieder, Senior Director of Siemens Corporate R&D Base Technologies Applications Center for Microelectronics in Munich, gave enthusiastic feedback on how such shifts in the research agenda support the strategic mission and goals of Siemens. He cited both inter- and intra-company examples where collaborative developments require greater synergism. For example, the joint development efforts by IBM-Toshiba-Siemens in creating advanced DRAM technology are well-known and has leveraged volume production capabilities. These production facilities located in Regensburg and Dresden each need technical support from and interaction with researchers in other locations and proposed internet-based collaborations may offer a very efficient supplement to conventional means based on personal visits. In addition, the Siemens research group headed by Dr. Christoph Werner has for many years actively developed equipment models for plasma and CVD systems. The news that Applied Materials has now joined CIS was of great interest to that group, offering possibilities for new collaborations to not only test their models but also to have an impact on the equipment design process itself. The Stanford-Siemens collaborations in process modeling and equipment simulation now span four generations of students and opportunities for productive interactions continue to spawn interesting collaborative projects.

Torkel Arnborg (left) and Gunnar Bjorklund (right) of Ericsson, meet with SPIE students Adrian Ong, Shih-Fen Huang, Prof. Robert Dutton, Boris Troyanovsky, and Zongjian Chen in Kista, Sweden
photo by Anders Anjou

Ericsson Connections---

A series of interactions with staff from Ericsson Components, Microelectronics Research Center (MERC), during September, October and November has resulted in two very exciting developments. Using an advanced version of Stanford's PISCES code (2D device simulator) with capabilities for analyzing harmonic content in RF circuits, the collaborations have generated new understanding of harmonic (HD) and intermodulation (IM) distortion -- a joint paper is to be given at ISSCC on February 8, 1995. The most advanced technologies used by Ericsson are being developed in a facility that they jointly build in collaboration with Texas Instruments, also a CIS Partner.

During the SPIE visit to Sweden (Sept. 1995) our students and Ericsson staff had an active dialog on advanced circuits techniques for wireless and signal processing architectures. Drs. Gunnar Bjorklund and Nanxiong Tan, a MERC technical staff and graduate of both KTH (Linkping University, Sweden) and Tsinghua (Beijing), were especially interested in opportunities to interact with researchers in China. Through a dialog orchestrated by Dr. Zhiping Yu (see "Alumni Spotlight" below), we were all able to meet in Beijing to initiate a three-way collaboration between Ericsson-Tsinghua-Stanford in the area of signal processing. During that same visit we met Dr. S. Y. Wang, a senior scientist in Hewlett-Packard Labs, who was also visiting Tsinghua with interest and great enthusiasm in promoting increased industrial-university research in China. The number of joint ventures and research labs being established, especially in Beijing and Shanghai, give clear evidence in this direction.

A Global Alumni Association---

The above examples show two very exciting trends in global partnerships. From the perspective of our CIS partnership with industry, it is extremely exciting to see expanding circles of win-win thinking -- both between the companies and at the industry-academic boundaries. Over the past five years the expanding set of CIS Partners has effectively transcended the US-European boundaries. The above examples clearly show the need to complete the globalization of CIS through strong industrial and academic connections in Asia as well.

The opportunity for creating a global alumni association deserves special emphasis. The trends to "down-size" industrial organizations and especially basic research labs creates a global need to improve efficiency in creating and disseminating information. Connecting researchers across industrial-academic and multi-national boundaries is an essential step in the process. In closing, I hope that each of our CIS Partners will continue to mobilize in building this virtual research enterprise.

by Nabeel Ibrahim

On Tuesday, November 14, 1995, more than 70 students and 12 faculty attended the first Electrical Engineering student/professor social mixer. The mixer, held in CIS 101, was co-sponsored by Stanford's IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and Electrical Engineering Department.

Prof. Calvin Quate and graduate student Nabeel Ibrahim at EE faculty/student mixer

The idea for a mixer was proposed at a meeting of the IEEE officers. The officers later approached Joe Goodman, EE department head, who enthusiastically supported the idea. Goodman arranged the funding for the event and was instrumental in ensuring that faculty members attended.

The purpose of the mixer was to enhance communication between professors and students. Furthermore, it was hoped that this event would afford students an opportunity to find professors with whom they could work.

According to graduate student Jim Schneider the event did just that. "The mixer provided a good opportunity to socialize with the faculty," said Schneider, "and an excellent chance to familiarize myself with new and old faces in the department."

Due to positive response from both students and faculty, the IEEE and Goodman hope to make the mixer an annual event.

by David Salisbury

When he succeeds James F. Gibbons as Dean of the School of Engineering next year, computer scientist John L. Hennessy will become the first scholar in that position with an information science and technology background that encompasses both hardware and software. This background "will allow him to bring a new dimension to the job," said Gibbons, who described all previous deans, himself included, as "hardware jockeys."

John L. Hennessy
photo by L.A. Cicero

Hennessy, chairman of Stanford's Computer Science Department since 1994, said that one of his top priorities will be completing the process of fully integrating computing into the engineering school's research and teaching. Increasingly, Hennessy said, engineers are using computers not just as analytical instruments but also as interactive design tools.

Hennessy, the Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor in the School of Engineering, has been at Stanford since 1977. He served as director of the Computer Systems Laboratory for 10 years before assuming the chairmanship of the computer science department. He will take the helm of the engineering school on June 17, 1996.

Joseph Goodman, professor and chairman of electrical engineering who headed the search committee, said he personally favored Hennessy because he is well known for his research, has a strong reputation as an educator and has experience as an entrepreneur who is well connected in Silicon Valley and the computer industry. In addition, Goodman said, "We felt that, because computing will be at the heart of every field of engineering by the next decade or two, it made sense to pick someone with a strong background in this area."

Influenced the industry

Hennessy's research achievements have earned him a worldwide reputation in his field and have had a major impact on the computer industry. A past recipient of the National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Award and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, hennessy also has been active at the national level. He has served on numerous boards, committees and task forces on computer and information science for the National Science Foundation, the National Research Council, the National Academy of Sciences and other organizations.

Focus on academics

Hennessy will take over the reins of the engineering school on several high notes.

In the recent National Research Council ranking of Ph.D. programs, the school ranked first in the nation in scholarly quality in computer science, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering; third in aerospace and civil engineering; sixth in materials science; and seventh in industrial and chemical engineering. On the undergraduate front, in its annual college review U.S. News and World Report ranked Stanford engineering as tied for first place with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"We're coming off the NRC ratings and the U.S News and World Report rankings, which all are very complimentary to Stanford. So the question is, "How can we do better than that? That will be a real challenge," Hennessy said.

Hennessy considers Stanford's relationship with Silicon Valley to be unique and sets a high priority on maintaining it: "It's a win-win relationship in a lot of different dimensions: economic vitality, industrial vitality, giving faculty an outlet for their ideas. I think that, to no small extent, this relationship is responsible for our health and for many of the terrific things that happen in our departments. I think we need to preserve it."

He describes the experience of starting a company and working in the valley as second only in importance to coming to Stanford, in terms of the impact that it has had on his teaching. "After all, most of our students will go into industry and not spend their lives in academia, so having some feel for what goes on out there makes a big difference," he said.

by Maneesh Agrawala, Andrew Beers, Bernd Froelich, and Pat Hanrahan

Many people such as technicians, engineers, scientists, physicians, and architects work on tables or lab benches every day. Although many computer applications use the "desktop metaphor," a conventional vertical CRT or flat-panel display is used to display information, and the interaction mostly consists of moving documents around with a mouse. A group headed by Prof. Pat Hanrahan, and sponsored by Interval Research Corporation and NASA, together with GMD, the German National Research Center for Information Technology, has been developing on a new virtual reality system, called The Responsive Workbench. The Workbench is based on an extended tabletop metaphor which allows users to directly interact with 3D virtual objects on a real table. Our experience with the system has shown it to be a compelling and effective virtual environment for many applications.

A computer graphic of the Computer Graphics Lab's Responsive Workbench

The Responsive Workbench creates an environment where virtual objects are located on a real workbench. The objects, displayed as computer generated stereo images, are projected onto the surface of a table from below via a projector-and-mirrors system. By wearing stereo shutter glasses, users of the system see the virtual objects in 3D, normally resting on or above the table surface. The user's head position is tracked and the computer-generated stereo image recomputed from that vantage point, so that the virtual objects appear stationary with respect to the physical table. In addition, the 3D position of the user's hand or of a handheld stylus is tracked, allowing the user to directly interact with the virtual objects in a natural way. Thus, it is very easy to move or reorient an object in real time, and to control 3D widgets to inspect or interrogate the simulated objects in the system. One user is in control of the system, but others can see the 3D objects and the results of the primary user's actions. Because a group of users can interact in the shared workspace, while also seeing each other, collaboration is natural and easy.

Currently we are working on several applications tailored to this type of environment. Together with NASA Ames Research Center, we have ported their virtual windtunnel software to interactively allow visualization of flow fields around complex shapes such as the airfoil of the Space Shuttle. We are also working with Prof. Bob Dutton on the visualization of the 3D geometry of semiconductor cells, allowing users to explore their construction layer by layer. Another project is involved with architecture and site planning; in particular, we are working on building a full model of the new Science and Engineering Quad, including the new addition to CIS, that shows the changes scheduled to take place over the next five years.

The Responsive Workbench is one example of the potential of new input and output technologies to revolutionize how scientists and engineers interact with complex datasets and simulations. Such systems pose many challenging research problems in the areas of electronic sensor and display technologies, and the integration of software and hardware systems, very much in the spirit of the Center for Integrated Systems.

CIS has developed a number of programs to enhance its students' preparation for post-graduate careers, particularly with CIS Partner companies. Until now, however, these efforts have not been linked together as part of a larger integrated strategy. This connection is now being accomplished under an umbrella entitled the CIS CAReer Enhancement Services (CARES).

CARES links programs impacting two groups of Stanford graduate students of particular interest to CIS Partner companies: (1) the top 50 or so co-terminal* BS/MS students, and (2) the top 200 or so Ph.D. students. Both groups include students majoring in such areas as applied physics, computer science, electrical engineering, and materials science.

CARES programs begin with Stage One (see diagram above). At this point, the top co-term students are identified and exposed to CIS and our Career Enhancement Services. Efforts are also made to place such students in CIS Partner company summer positions between their senior and graduate year.

During this time CIS also conducts an extensive recruitment effort to attract into Stanford the top 50 or so Ph.D. electrical engineering graduate students for the following year. Given our competition, Stanford needs to be very aggressive with such efforts if it wants to get more than its fair share of these top students.

Programs in the following year (Stage Two) include the CIS teaching of a graduate seminar taken by all incoming (approximately 200) electrical engineering masters and doctoral students, the identification of the top performers on Ph.D. qualification examinations, and assistance with the placement of both co-term and Ph.D. students in full-time and summer positions with CIS Partner companies.

Stage Three involves the continued exposure of doctoral students to CIS Partner companies through company tours and presentations at informal seminars, summer jobs at CIS Partner companies, and the initiation of the student's dissertation research.

In Stage Four extensive efforts are undertaken to bring top doctoral students to the attention of CIS Partner companies. This exposure is accomplished mainly through two time-honored CIS programs, the Fellow - Mentor- Advisor (FMA) program and the Student - Partner - Information - Exchange (SPIE) program. In the former, students are paired with mentors at Partner companies who provide advice and resources to aid in the student's research. In the latter, teams of advanced graduate students visit Partner companies to present their research and discuss developments with members of their technical staff.

Finally, as graduation approaches CIS initiates programs to assist our Partners in hiring doctoral students for full-time positions. These recruitment efforts are of course strengthened by the fact that over the four stages of the preceding years the CAReer Enhancement Services outlined above have brought many of the very best students to the attention of CIS Partner companies.

Richard M. Reis
Executive Director

* Co-terminal students are those who after five years at Stanford receive both a bachelor's and master's degree in a given field.

While facilitating the exchange of knowledge between academia and industry has always been at the heart of the CIS mission, that collaboration has taken on a more global aspect recently, due in large part to the efforts of Zhiping Yu, a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford.

Zhiping Yu, Bob Dutton, N. Tan, and Gunnar Bjorklund meet with (far right), Yi Luo, Chen Hongyi, Deputy Director of Research, and 4 faculty members from the Department of Electronic Engineering and the Institute of Microelectronics at Tsinghua University

In that role, while simultaneously holding a tenured Associate Professor position at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, Yu has served as a catalyst for collaborations not only between Tsinghua and Stanford, but also between Tsinghua and Ericsson, a CIS Partner company.

Yu graduated from Tsinghua University, the top technical university in China, in 1967. Following 10 years of factory work during the cultural revolution, he was among the first group of students to go abroad for graduate studies with the easing of relations in the late 1970s. Having never heard of Stanford, but with his advisor's assistance, he chose to study with Prof. Bob Dutton here at Stanford, where he received his MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering in 1980 and 1985 respectively.

From 1986 to 1989 Yu was one of the chief architects in a national project of developing a complete IC CAD design system (PANDA) in China. His research interests focus on IC process, device, and circuit simulation, and in particular, the numerical techniques and modeling of devices with heterostructures.

As Yu says, "One of the beauties of science is its predictability. The derivatives are what mathematics uses for prediction of a system change. Back ten years ago when I conducted research in SGS, Milan, Italy as a Stanford postdoc, I realized that the Jacobian matrix, which is the derivative of a nonlinear system, in Newton iterations can be used for many nice predictive applications in semiconductor device simulation. Since then I've been thinking of a way to improve this predictability, but itÍs not easy. On a quiet Saturday morning last year, when Prof. Dutton and I were working in the AEL (the Applied Electronics Lab), an idea of a second order Newton iteration scheme finally came to mind. It just took some paper to prove the whole thing which I had thought about for ten years."

Yu has kept in close contact with Tsinghua University, his home institution, during the past 6 years, and he has helped to initiate and then to strengthen links between Tsinghua and Stanford. He arranged in 1990 for Donald Kennedy, then President of Stanford, to meet with Xiaowen Zhang, the former President of Tsinghua University, and in 1994 for Prof. Dutton and Condoleezza Rice, Provost, to meet with Dazhong Wang, the President of Tsinghua University, and his delegation.

In May 1995, Dutton put him in touch with Torkel Arnburg and Gunnar Bjorklund, two CIS Advisory Committee members representing Ericsson, where another Tsinghua Electrical Engineering alum, Nianxiong Tan, has been working since 1995. One thing led to another, with continuing meetings between Yu and Dutton (Stanford), and Tan and Bjorklund (Ericsson), and faculty members from both the Department of Electronic Engineering and the Institute of Microelectronics at Tsinghua.

Now, due in large part to the efforts of Zhiping Yu, as well as many CIS affiliated faculty and Partner companies, a three-way collaboration has been developed across academic, geographical, and industrial lines, between Ericsson, Stanford, and Tsinghua.

This ongoing project has been facilitated in part by two other semiconductor research centers, both involving CIS Partner companies, in close proximity to Tsinghua University. IBM runs one of its six research labs around the world in a Science Park just outside of Beijing, and Motorola operates the largest semiconductor project in China in the city of Tianjin, also not far from Beijing.

Again, to quote Yu: "Life is a bit like mountain climbing. You made a tremendous effort and then were able to enjoy the awesome scenery on the top of nowhere. In my seventh trip to Japan as part of joint research project between Stanford and Matsushita (MEI) last summer, I realized my dream of climbing Mt. Fuji. It's a hellish ordeal stretched out over the entire night. Yet, at a chilly dawn on the edge of the peak's crater, when you saw the sun jumping out of a cloud over the Pacific Ocean, the excitement makes for the experience of a lifetime."

CIS Newsletter

Editor:
Harrianne Mills
650/725-3626

Send comments, suggestions to: coordinator@cis.stanford.edu

Updated 8/30/96