In This Issue

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• Past IEEE-ISTO Director and Musician James Williamson Named 2015 Recipient of Ronald H. Brown Standards Leadership Award
• InLocation Alliance Announces the Winners of Its Best Use Case Contest
• Synopsys’ Modeling of 10 nanometer Parasitic Variation Effects Ratified by IMTAB
• OpenPOWER Foundation Summit Recap
• Two New White Papers About the TALQ Specification Published
• An Unexpected Walk - One IEEE-ISTO Director's Experience at Mt. Everest Base Camp during the recent earthquake that shook Nepal
• Current IEEE-ISTO Program News
• Current IEEE-ISTO Program Events

Past IEEE-ISTO Director and Musician James Williamson Named 2015 Recipient of Ronald H. Brown Standards Leadership Award

James Williamson, electronics engineer, acclaimed musician, and former vice president of technical standards at Sony Electronics, has been selected by the U.S. Celebration of World Standards Day Planning Committee as the 2015 recipient of the prestigious Ronald H. Brown Standards Leadership Award. Mr. Williamson will be honored by members of the U.S. standards and conformance community during the U.S. Celebration of World Standards Day, which will be held on 1 October 2015, at the Fairmont Washington in Washington, DC.

Named for the late U.S. Secretary of Commerce, the Brown award recognizes demonstrated leadership in promoting the important role of standardization in eliminating global barriers to trade. The award is presented at the U.S. Celebration of World Standards Day, an annual event which honors the U.S. standards and conformity assessment community and recognizes its efforts to promote American competitiveness in a global marketplace, safeguard the environment, and improve the quality of life for workers and consumers around the world.

Read the full release on the ANSI website.

InLocation Alliance Announces the Winners of Its Best Use Case Contest

The InLocation Alliance (ILA) recently announced the winners of its Best Use Case Contest at its annual Plenary hosted by CSR in Cambridge, UK. The contest invited members to submit descriptions of successful deployments of Indoor Positioning technology and was judged by a Peer Review panel of members based on the benefits the solution offers stakeholders, the novelty of the solution and the solution’s compliance with the ILA System Architecture.

“I am delighted by the quality of entries to the competition. The breadth of applications from the finalists demonstrate the growing market potential from Indoor Positioning,” said Jouni Kämäräinen, Chair of ILA.

Read the full release on the ILA website.

Synopsys’ Modeling of 10 nanometer Parasitic Variation Effects Ratified by IMTAB

Synopsys, Inc. recently announced new extensions to its open-source Interconnect Technology Format (ITF) which enable modeling of complex device and interconnect parasitic effects at the advanced 10 nanometer (nm) process node. The new extensions include modeling of variation effects due to multi-patterning technology (MPT). Synopsys collaborated with the members of the Interconnect Modeling Technical Advisory Board (IMTAB) an IEEE-ISTO Federation Member Program, to define and ratify these new extensions. They will be available in the upcoming open-source ITF version 2015.06.

“Enabling productive design and analysis for a colored layout flow, while also providing a solution to model increased parasitic variation due to MPT approaches, is critical at 10-nm,” said Bari Biswas, vice president of engineering for extraction solutions at Synopsys and chair of IMTAB. “Through our collaboration with IMTAB members and leading foundries, Synopsys developed an innovative solution that extended the existing variation models in ITF to become intrinsically color-aware to more accurately model mask dependency while fitting seamlessly into a designer’s existing flow.”

Read the full release on the IMTAB website.

OpenPOWER Foundation Summit Recap

The First Annual OpenPOWER Summit took place 17-19 March at the San Jose Convention Center. It was hosted within the GPU Technology Conference (GTC), which had thousands of technology sector attendees and significant industry press and analyst presence including developers, researchers, government agencies, and industry luminaries.

The OpenPOWER Summit had a lineup of OpenPOWER Foundation keynote speakers, technical workgroup updates and member presentations on 18 March. During the three-day event there was an exhibitor pavilion where OpenPOWER Members demonstrated their latest advancements.

See more at the OpenPOWER Foundation website.

Two New White Papers About the TALQ Specification Published

The TALQ Consortium recently published two new white papers for those eager to learn more about the TALQ specification and how to apply it.

The first white paper presents an overview of the TALQ specification. It provides information about the architecture & protocol stack, the data model, and what kind of services are enabled and discusses the key features. It also explains the classification of features in mandatory, optional and vendor specific features.

More detailed information about the communication between a Central Management System and the TALQ bridge is provided in the second white paper, “TALQ Application Protocol Transaction Management”. This should help in understanding the flow of the messages on the interface, how to handle communication errors and in the development of the software for a TALQ specification compliant interface.

Both white papers can be found on the TALQ website.

An Unexpected Walk - One IEEE-ISTO Director's Experience at Mt. Everest Base Camp during the recent earthquake that shook Nepal

By Mike Violette

Just over a year ago, my brother-in-law suggested that we go on a walk in the mountains. I first said "sure!" before asking "where?" He suggested a good place to start would be the Khumbu Valley in Nepal. Destination: Everest Base Camp. In a weak, gin-hazed moment I jumped all over the idea. Yes!  A bucket list entry of soaring depth. Why not? How hard could it be? What's the worst that could happen?

By the time our little adventure was over, the fates of tens of thousands of Nepalese would change forever.  In any case, a small trek turned out to be a most unexpected walk in the mountains.

Read more about Mike's experience.

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