Akira Matsuzawa’s Contribution to Japan’s Semiconductor Industry: My reflections

I met Akira Matsuzawa in 1988 at an event that may have some significance in the community of Japanese analog IC designers. The occasion was the second JSAP/IEEE Symposium on VLSI Circuits held in Tokyo. The event was a rump session (a designation unique to this symposium) that turned into an informal congress of the leaders from the major Japanese companies involved in the design of analog-to-digital (A/D) converters (ADCs) for portable video cameras, or camcorders. The event was memorable enough to warrant a listing of its participants (Table 1).