Summary of the 10th International Symposium on Power Semiconductor Devices & Integrated Circuits ISPSD'98 by M. Ayman Shibib The 10th International Conference on power semiconductor devices and IC's was held at the Rihga Royal Hotel in Kyoto, Japan, during June 3-6, 1998. The conference was sponsored by IEE of Japan and co-sponsored by the Electron Devices Society. It was attended by about 370 people, and it included a special banquet celebrating the 10th anniversary of ISPSD. Dr. Yoshiyuki Uchida, of Fuji Electric, opened the ceremony with the traditional "Kagami-wari" (see picture on page 17) with all previous general chairmen of past Symposia participating. Dr. Ayman Shibib, member of EDS AdCom and a founding member of ISPSD, delivered a speech about the history of ISPSD and how the founding Japanese and American members unified the Symposium as the main international forum on power devices and integrated circuits. ISPSD is held annually and rotates sites between Europe, Japan and North America. Following Dr. Shibib's speech, there was a keynote address by Prof. E. Masada, President of IEE of Japan and on the faculty of the Science University of Tokyo. Prof. Masada gave a very interesting talk about "Energy, Environment & Evolution - Can Power Electronics solve the problem" in which he challenged the audience to participate and put their efforts to support the environment. A special ISPSD award was presented to Dr. Akio Nakagawa of Toshiba Corp. for his paper " Impact of Dielectric Isolation Technology on Power IC's" presented at the 1991 ISPSD, Baltimore, Maryland, for its maximum impact in the field. Image : ispsd.jpg (171767 bytes) "Kagami-wari" ceremony at ISPSD'98, Kyoto, Japan The technical program included 46 oral and 51 poster presentations. The oral papers included three in the plenary session : "Trends in Power Discrete Devices" by Prof. Baliga, North Carolina State University, "Smart Power Approaches VLSI Complexity" by Dr. Contiero, SGS-Thomson, and "Toyota's Newly Developed Hybrid Powertrain" by Dr. Sasaki, Toyota Motor Corp. The other papers were organized into 13 sessions: - SOI Devices I & II, - IGBT's I & II, - Thyristors I & II, - High Voltage IGBT's, - MOSFET's, - Smart Power Devices, - SiC Devices, - Diodes, - Poster Session, - Power IC's. M. Ayman Shibib, Editor