Retrospective on the 2001 Symposium on VLSI circuits

The 2001 Symposium on VLSI Circuits was held 14–16 June in Kyoto, Japan. The Symposium covered all aspects of transistor-level design including memories, multimedia networking, data transmission, and design optimization. This year there were 431 attendees from 16 countries. A record 76 papers were presented, chosen from 153 submissions. Particularly exciting this year was the unprecedented increase in papers presented by students from colleges and universities. Many of these papers were selected by the Session Chairs to be the highlighted papers for the Symposium. In spite of the recent difficult economic times, the Symposium has experienced increased attendance over each of the last three years. This, together with the surge of high quality university papers, is a very positive sign for the future.