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The Benelux RF Conference brings together Belgian and Dutch high-tech professionals and companies involved in the development and application of high-end RF techniques. The sixth edition will take place as a live event on Wednesday 1 June 2022 at Van der Valk Nijmegen. On Thursday 2 September 2021, we organized an online kickoff.

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1 JUNE 2022 VAN DER VALK NIJMEGEN 

Program

On Wednesday 1 June 2022, the sixth edition will take place as a live event.

Registration

Keynote

09:45 - 10:30

The role of photonics for 6G and beyond wireless communications

Idelfonso Tafur Monroy

Professor at Eindhoven University of Technology

Break

11:00 - 11:30

Mm-wave CMOS as low-cost fiber alternative for 1 Gb/s at home

Carl De Ranter

VP engineering at Pharrowtech

11:00 - 11:30

The path towards 6G: from millimeter waves to THz

Fabian Kronowetter

Junior development engineer and PhD candidate at Rohde & Schwarz

11:30 - 12:00

Characterization methods for antenna-in-package applications at mm-wave frequencies

Sander Bronckers

Co-founder at Antennex

Francesca Chiappini

Program manager at CITC

11:30 - 12:00

Surfing on the 6G communication waves using heterogeneous integration technologies

Mark Ingels

Principle member of technical staff at Imec

Lunch

13:30 - 14:00

Mm-wave OTA validation and test – do you really need a chamber?

Marc Vanden Bossche

Chief RF network analysis engineer at NI

13:30 - 14:00

Advanced behavioral modeling for complex front-end system analysis

Wissam Saabe

Modeling and application engineer at Amcad Engineering

14:00 - 14:30

Load-pull techniques for 5G and 6G applications: state-of-the-art and future

Mauro Marchetti

Director at Anteverta, part of Maury Microwave
David Prestaux Ansys RF

14:00 - 14:30

Performing quick thermal analysis of electromagnetic designs towards the optimal SiP sign-off

David Prestaux

Principal application engineer at Ansys

Break

15:00 - 16:00

RF engineering for quantum technology: massively scalable signal generation and I/O

Jules van Oven

CTO at Qblox

15:00 - 15:30

The linear power challenge for future 5G massive MIMO mobile communication systems

Fred van Rijs

Engineering fellow at Ampleon

Sal Bosman

CEO at Delft Circuits

15:30 - 16:00

Hands-on GaN Doherty amplifier design

Martijn Brethouwer

Senior RF application engineer at Bruco IC

Break

Gabriel Rebeiz keynote Benelux RF Conference

Remote keynote

16:30 - 17:15

How we changed the world using silicon-based phased-arrays: leaving the Marconi era and entering the directive communications era

Gabriel Rebeiz

Distinguished Professor at University of California, San Diego

Drinks and dinner

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1 JUNE 2022 VAN DER VALK NIJMEGEN 

Register

Register for the Benelux RF Conference. On Wednesday 1 June 2022, the sixth edition will take place as a live event.

About the Benelux RF Conference

  • Sessions on product-specific applications with a focus on innovative solutions in combination with advanced wireless technology
  • In-depth sessions highlighting trends such as RF energy and RF power and focusing on engineers, designers and technical managers in the advanced RF field

Our target audience

  • engineers
  • team leaders
  • technical managers
  • product developers
  • innovation managers

Conference date

1 June 2022 – real-life conference in Nijmegen

Tickets

An entrance ticket for the live event includes lunch, drinks, a networking dinner at the end of the day and admission to the presentations and sponsor area. 

Your order confirmation email will serve as your ticket for admission on 1 June at Van der Valk in Nijmegen, please bring it to the event (on your phone or printed).

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1 JUNE 2022 VAN DER VALK NIJMEGEN 

Sign up as a sponsor

Sponsoring the Benelux RF Conference could be a great component of your marketing strategy.

Get a bigger ROI out of the conference, be part of the promotion media mix (mailings, advertising, social media, content marketing and PR).

If you’re interested in sponsoring the event, but you first want to have a look at our virtual event space, you can apply for a demo via email.

Bronze sponsor

€ 2,500
  • 2 tickets for the live event
  • Workstation (high table + max. 1 banner) of 4 m² at the live event
  • Your logo on event promotions (advertisements, website, mailings)*
  • Participant list
Register

Silver sponsor

€ 3,500
  • 4 tickets for the live event
  • Stand of 6 m² at the live event (table + possibility to place your background banner)
  • Your logo on event promotions (advertisements, website, mailings)*
  • Participant list
  • 1/2 page advertisement or 1/1 page article (written by you) in Bits&Chips**
Register

Gold sponsor

€ 5,000
  • 6 tickets for the live event
  • Stand of 8 m² at the live event (table + possibility to place your background banner)
  • Your logo on event promotions (advertisements, website, mailings)*
  • Participant list
  • 1/1 page advertisement or 2/1 page article (written by you) in Bits&Chips**
  • Your gadget distributed at the live event
Register

All prices are exclusive of VAT * If available and timely registered ** If available and timely registered, not exchangeable for prior reservations

Sponsor tips

Want to make the best out of your sponsorship and maximise your return on investment? Help the organizers of the conference, and promote your sponsorship!

  • Mailings; write an email invite and encourage your relations to attend the conference and/or invite other relations too.
  • Calendar; publish the event with date and location on your website, social media calendars etc.
  • Write about; make a short article about your presence at the conference, publish it on the website of your organization, link it in your e-mail signature, newsletters and share it on social media. #BCRF

Doing this increases event reach and attendance, which has mutual benefits, but it also gives you direct contact with the attendees prior, during and after the event. Do not hesitate to ask the conference organization for input, like content or visuals.

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1 JUNE 2022 VAN DER VALK NIJMEGEN

We are Techwatch

At Techwatch, we can handle all of your marketing and content needs for the high-tech industry.

We offer content services, organize (online) events (and offer them as a service) and we create and host webinars, podcasts and videos.

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Events

At Techwatch, we offer virtual solutions for remote events. We facilitate webinars, training courses, lectures and network sessions.

Techwatch organizes its own events and conferences for the high-tech industry. Additionally, we help you with organizing your event. An event is a great way to promote your product, company or organization.

Magazines

Techwatch is a full-service media platform and publisher of two magazines: Bits&Chips (English) and Mechatronica&Machinebouw (Dutch).

Have a look at the mediakits for more information, like circulation profile or the editorial calendar.

Contact

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6534 AT Nijmegen
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Systems Engineering Vision 2035

 

Recently a team of leaders from the worldwide systems community produced the Systems Engineering Vision 2035 with inputs from across industry, academia, and government for the International Council for System Engineering (Incose).

This vision is produced every 10 years and is intended to inspire and guide the strategic direction of systems engineering for the global systems community. It can be used to develop strategies to evolve the systems engineering capability of an enterprise or project. The vision can also be used to help direct investments and support collaborative efforts to advance the discipline and grow the skill base to meet current and future challenges related to systems development.

Harry van der Velde will present the 2035 version at Sysarch. After his presentation there will be ample time for discussion.

Harry van der Velde joined Shell almost 25 years ago as a process engineer. He started his career supporting offshore platforms in the central North Sea with his role as commissioning engineer of the Shearwater platform as a highlight. In 2001, he moved to Malaysia to work for Sarawak Shell Berhad where he was responsible for process engineering support for the upstream facilities that deliver gas to the Malaysia LNG facilities in Bintulu. He subsequently became lead systems engineer for the Gumusut Floating Production Systems in Kuala Lumpur ensuring an optimized and integrated design for topsides, hull and subsea systems. In 2007, he was seconded to ENI and worked in Atyrau, Kazakhstan as senior project engineer for the offshore facilities of the Kashagan EP project. He joined the Floating LNG team in 2010 as an Engineering Manager by working on Prelude, Abadi and Browse FLNG projects. The last four years he was in Shell Internal Audit as audit manager responsible for independent assurance of the Liquid Natural Gas, Gas to Liquids and New Energies portfolios. In 2021, he re-joined Shell Projects and Technology and is responsible for the implementation of Systems Engineering in capital projects and is global community lead for Engineering Management.

 Harry will be the chairman of the Dutch Incose chapter from march 2023.

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Ultra-low-power intelligent sensing with the spiking neural processor

Intelligent sensing will be central in providing a seamless user experience in electronic devices – headphones that understand the difference between speech and background noise, security cameras that can differentiate between humans and pets, wearables that can detect if you’re falling ill. However, the narrow power envelope of these battery-powered devices is often a significant obstacle in realizing rich application functionalities based on traditional neural networks. Innatera employs a radically different approach to processing data efficiently at the sensor edge. Using brain-inspired spiking neural networks atop a programmable analog-mixed signal architecture, Innatera’s spiking neural processor enables always-on sensing applications within an ultra-low power budget. This talk introduces the spiking neural processor and outlines how its neuromorphic architecture enables sub-milliwatt signal processing and pattern recognition at the sensor edge.

Sumeet Kumar is the CEO of Innatera Nanosystems, the pioneering Dutch neuromorphic processor company. He holds an MSc and PhD in microelectronics from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. He was previously with Intel, where he worked with the Imaging and Camera Technologies Group developing domain-specific tools for the development of complex media processor architectures. At Delft, he is credited with creating two highly successful European R&D programs developing energy-efficient compute hardware for highly automated vehicles, together with organizations including Infineon, NXP and BMW, among others. He was also responsible for leading industry-focused research on power-efficient multiprocessors and computational neuroscience.

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RF engineering for quantum technology: massively scalable signal generation and I/O

To move quantum computers from the proof-of-principle stage towards real-life applications, many engineering challenges need to be overcome. Amongst these are the generation and routing of control signals. As most of the platforms require signal frequencies between DC and 20 GHz, these challenges are for a large part RF engineering challenges. The fundamentally sensitive nature of qubits drastically complicates these: qubits need to be placed at ultralow temperatures (<< 1 K) and control signals require extremely precise timings (<< 1 ns), low signal noise, distortion, drift and crosstalk. Qblox and Delft Circuits work precisely on these topics and provide quantum computer developers around the world with their state-of-the-art control technology. This talk starts at the level of the quantum bits to understand their control needs at a fundamental level and goes up into the stack layer by layer to discuss challenges in the cabling (Delft Circuits), the control electronics (Qblox) and the digital infrastructure for feedback (Qblox).

Jules van Oven holds a BSc and MSc degree in physics from Delft University of Technology where he graduated in the group of Lieven Vandersypen on the development of reflectometry setups to speed up the readout of spin qubits. After graduation, he became the lead engineer of Innoseis, responsible for the development of a wireless sensor network for seismology applications. From 2016-2018, he rejoined Qutech as an electrical engineer, within the lab of Leonardo DiCarlo. He was part of the team that developed the Qutech Waveform Generator and the Central Controller, specifically designed for fault-tolerant quantum computing. At Qblox, he’s responsible for R&D, operations and works with CEO Niels Bultink on sales and IP growth.

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The linear power challenge for future 5G massive MIMO mobile communication systems

With the current roll-out of 5G telecommunication infrastructure systems and especially with the new massive MIMO architecture and the opening of the higher sub-6 GHz frequency bands, the RF power amplifier architecture and technology have gone through a major transformation. The roll-out fueled and accelerated the technology developments and large advancements have been made at all levels such as power efficiency, linearity, bandwidth and integration. However, the next and future steps in 5G LTE networks, necessary to fulfil the growing demand of wireless communication, prove to be even more challenging. This talk sketches the progress that has been made so far, as well as the future trends and challenges from an RF power amplifier point of view.

Fred van Rijs holds a PhD in electrical engineering from Delft University of Technology. In 1992, he started at Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven on advanced silicon technologies such as SiGe HBTs. In 1999, he moved to Philips Semiconductors in Nijmegen, later NXP Semiconductors, initiating pHEMT technology for the next-generation CATV linear power amplifiers and was responsible for the development of LDMOS technology for base station RF power amplifiers. Currently, he is working at Ampleon on technologies required for future RF power applications.

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Hands-on GaN Doherty amplifier design

Although we have been developing RF power amplifiers for more than a decade, it does not grow old and the challenges remain. This talk will take you through the paces of a Doherty amplifier development process with all its pitfalls and hurdles. Using newly developed GaN devices as example, the flow will be illustrated step by step, sharing experiences in designing these amplifiers for 5G basestation applications in the 3.5 GHz band.

Martijn Brethouwer is a senior RF application engineer at Bruco Integrated Circuits. He has more than four years of experience in developing Doherty amplifiers. Before joining Bruco IC, he worked two years at Astron as an RF engineer. He holds an MSc degree in electrical engineering from the University of Twente.

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Performing quick thermal analysis of electromagnetic designs towards the optimal system-in-package sign-off

Millimeter and sub-millimeter waves are nowadays being widely adopted within a variety of applications developed across the high-tech industry, including high-resolution automotive radar sensors, but also the fifth and sixth generation mobile communications RF front-ends. These applications primarily consist of a system-in-package tightly integrated with radiating elements to ensure adequate electromagnetic performance. Managing the design of such devices is particularly challenging from a manufacturing capabilities and related tolerances point of view, as the size of the metallic features shrinks with the frequency increase, but also due to the fact the power densities significantly increase, potentially leading to thermal issues. As such, RF IC package engineers not only need to accurately predict the electromagnetic performance of their implementation but also need to assess adequate thermal dissipation of these complex devices starting from early phases, driving their decisions towards the best system-in-package design sign-off. This talk will showcase solutions aimed at addressing these multiphysics simulation needs.

David Prestaux Ansys RF
David Prestaux is a principal application engineer for Ansys, supporting customers in Europe to use high-frequencies software. He has more than twenty years of experience in numerical analysis and promotes methodology and the usage of simulation tools for virtual prototypes. From nanoscale component to full system, he worked with the most innovative companies to deliver with the help of electromagnetic simulation. Microwave components, packages, PCBs, filters, antennas, arrays and integration analysis are among the applications he covered. He also interacts with development and product management on improving HFSS simulation software. Prior to joining Ansys, he graduated from ESIGELEC engineering school in France and worked in the US and the UK for Ansoft and Framatome.
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Advanced behavioral modeling methodology for complex front-end system analysis

The fast and ever-increasing demand for high-speed data services has been motivating and leading to define the next generation of telecommunication systems. To take advantage of this opportunity, methods and techniques to design RF and MW subsystems must continue to evolve to meet the requirements that include spectral and energy efficiency and, on the other hand, to reduce costs and time to market. To deal with these challenges, important works have focused on modeling and simulating front-end designs to allow analysis and optimization at a system level. This talk will present a comprehensive methodology to extract a black-box model of a power amplifier for two application examples: the evaluation of linearization techniques and the front-end design of an advanced antenna system.

Wissam Saabe is an application engineer at Amcad Engineering. He received the Master Research degree in electronics and optics for telecommunication from the University of Limoges in France in 2013, and is currently working towards the PhD degree at the Research Institute on Microwave and Optical Communications XLIM, University of Limoges. His research interests are non-linear analysis and behavioral modeling of RF and microwave circuits and subsystems.

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Load-pull techniques for 5G and 6G applications – state of the art and future

This talk will discuss the architecture of state-of-the-art load pull measurement systems for 5G and 6G applications. It will highlight the challenges involved in characterizing devices, circuits and systems for next-generation wireless applications, which pose very stringent requirements in terms of in-band (eg EVM) and out-of-band (eg ACPR) distortion. Application examples will be presented, including high-speed load pull for technology evaluations and power amplifier design, and modulated testing for 5G applications. Finally, a procedure will be described for evaluating traceable uncertainty in load pull measurements.

Mauro Marchetti received the BSc degree (cum laude) and the MSc degree (cum laude) in electrical engineering from the University of Naples “Federico II,” Naples, Italy, in 2004 and 2006, respectively, and the PhD degree from Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands, in 2013. In 2006, he joined the Electronics Research Laboratory at TU Delft where he carried out his PhD research on the development of advanced characterization setups for RF high-power and high-linearity amplifier design. In 2010, he co-founded and was appointed CEO of Anteverta, a company providing pioneering solutions in the fields of device characterization and high-performance power amplifier design. In 2015, Anteverta was acquired and became part of Maury Microwave. His research interests include the development of advanced characterization setups for RF high-power and high-linearity amplifier design.

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Mm-wave OTA validation and test – do you really need a chamber?

5G/6G wireless communication data bandwidth will get a large boost when we can efficiently exploit mm-wave and sub-THz frequencies that allow us to transmit over large contiguous bandwidths. To transmit at these carrier frequencies, engineers use active antenna arrays with beam steering to overcome the high path loss. Testing and validating these actively steered antenna arrays and beam steering algorithms is complex and expensive, often involving large chambers and over-the-air (OTA) measurements. This talk provides an overview of the different validation and test options for mm-wave active antenna array modules and related research and technology challenges. It will present NI’s current innovation activities around OTA measurements and discuss potential solutions to many of the challenges, enabling lower cost and thus broader adoption of the 5G/6G frequency bands.

In 1990, Marc Vanden Bossche received the PhD degree from Vrije Universiteit Brussel in electrical engineering focusing on the foundation of high-frequency large-signal network analysis. In 1991, he established a Hewlett-Packard R&D team in Belgium continuing to work on characterization and system-level modeling tools for high-frequency non-linear electrical components, leading to the expansion of the capabilities of VNAs beyond S-parameters. In collaboration with NIST, a phase calibration standard was established in the second half of the 90s, merging network and signal analysis. In June 2003, Vanden Bossche founded NMDG, which was acquired by NI in October 2012. At NI, he and his team introduced vector calibration techniques into the NI RF production test systems. Presently, he is technically leading the accurate characterization effort under modulation conditions at NI and scaling these efforts for over-the-air characterization.

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Surfing on the 6G communication waves using heterogeneous integration technologies

While 5G is being rolled out, 6G is already on the horizon to further increase wireless data rates up to 100 Gb/s for new applications such as 3D holography. These high data rates are best accommodated in wide frequency bands above 100 GHz, such as the D-band (110-170 GHz). So far, the functionality of wireless transceivers has been mainly implemented using downscaled CMOS, which allows a high integration complexity while featuring very fast transistors. Today we have come to a point where CMOS downscaling no longer increases transistor speed. In combination with the low supply voltage of nanoscale CMOS, generation of power, especially at mm-wave frequencies, is challenging for CMOS. To generate sufficient transmit power, D-band transceivers will need to resort to non-CMOS technologies such as InP. This talk will discuss how the combination of the antenna array, required for beamforming, the active circuits from different IC technologies (CMOS and InP) and advanced 2.5D or 3D technology can result in a high-performance 6G wireless transceiver.

Mark Ingels received the MSc and PhD degrees in microelectronics from the ESAT-MICAS Laboratories of the KU Leuven in 1990 and 2000, respectively. In 1999, he joined Alcatel Microelectronics, which was later acquired by STMicroelectronics, and worked on the integration of ADSL analog front-ends and Bluetooth RF transceivers. He joined Imec in 2005 and is now a principal member of technical staff in the Advanced RF research group working on mm-wave transceivers for future communication systems.

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Mm-wave CMOS as low-cost fiber alternative for 1Gb/s at home

The promises of 1Gb/s+ cellular data connectivity made by 5G network roll-outs is confronting fixed network operators with the risk of being left behind. As a consequence, the capability of an operator to offer a stable, affordable and ubiquitous 1 Gb/s internet connection is now no longer considered the holy grail but the next step needed to stay competitive. Early deep-fiber roll-outs show that high customer interest and retention are not enough to build a viable business with nation-wide availability, even when wireline technology is used for the final curb to home connection. By introducing wireless CMOS mm-wave technology in the network, a more favorable split between up-front and at-signup installation cost is achieved and a much wider range of neighborhoods can be serviced. This talk presents some of the technologies and methodologies used to build a carrier-grade 60 GHz product for the fixed-wireless access market with a fully integrated CMOS transceiver phased-array IC at its core.

After obtaining his MSc and PhD at KU Leuven, Carl De Ranter began his career at RF Magic, an RFIC Startup in San Diego, CA. There he worked on terrestrial and satellite TV tuners and became design manager to help build the start-up ahead of its merger and IPO. In 2013, he returned to Belgium to join design services house Ansem where he architected NFC and RFID front-ends. From 2015-2019, he consulted for a tier-1 smartphone chip supplier where he built the team that developed front-end RFIC IP shipping in over 100 million mobile phones. In 2019, he co-founded Pharrowtech, an Imec spin-off that develops mm-wave CMOS radio hardware and software for next-generation wireless applications.

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The role of photonics for 6G and beyond wireless communications

Although we don’t know exactly how wireless communications will look like beyond 2030, we may assume that we will most likely communicate using holograms and digital twins, and that the merge of real and virtual reality has happen in an hyper-reality internet. Such new ways of communications will demand a large capacity and ultra-low latency. Developing technologies to exploit the terahertz frequency spectrum to implement terabit data capacity wireless links seems a futuristic endeavor. This talk considers the role of photonics in tackling the challenge to realize systems to generate, detect, multiplex and process terabit volumes of data in wireless terahertz systems.

Idelfonso Tafur Monroy is a professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering of Eindhoven University of Technology. He is a principal investigator in the Center for Quantum Materials and Technology Eindhoven (QTE), the Institute for Photonics Integration (IPI) and the Center for Wireless Technology (CWTE) and co-founder of the Center for Terahertz Science and Technology (CTSTE). He performs and supervises research on the convergence of electronics and photonics technologies for applications such as THz communications, sensing and imaging. More recently, he and his team are setting up the Eindhoven test bed for quantum secure communications, as part of the national Dutch program Quantum Delta.

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Scaling up in photonic biosensors – applying lessons from the other side

Surfix Diagnostics is an early scale-up, bringing biosensors based on integrated photonics to the market. In this talk, CEO Maarten Buijs will try to convey what lessons he has learned during his corporate career on how to bring deep-tech innovations to the market, and how to apply them to the challenges Surfix is facing.

After drafting the roadmap for biosensors based on integrated photonics for Photondelta in 2020, Maarten Buijs is now the CEO of Surfix Diagnostics. Before engaging with integrated photonics, he was responsible for R&D at FEI in Europe (presently Thermo Fisher Scientific), ASML EUV, Nucletron/Elekta and finally Moba. Prior to that, he worked for 14 years at the Philips Natlab.

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Yes, Agile short cycles also work in high-tech development

Developing innovative high-tech equipment is a daunting challenge, especially for startups and scale-ups. Solid systems engineering and lots of organizing are required when working with partners from different fields of expertise (which is almost always the case). Generating new ideas and validating them in your next prototype can take a lot of time. And there is always the risk of drowning in specifications, procedures and organizational issues. But your engineers want to engineer! The solution? Do it Agile! Surprisingly, an Agile approach with short development cycles will also work in high-tech development. The key is taking smaller steps, dividing the components into really small functional units, which can be either software, programmable logic, electronics or mechanics. Next, project partners quickly build and develop these units in a parallel process or they can employ third parties such as prototyping services to do this. Finally, hardware and software units are integrated into a working prototype, ready to be tested. This way, the short cycles generate quick and frequent feedback on product feasibility. With an Agile approach to high-tech development, it becomes much easier to keep the focus on the technical development of the next prototype. It allows all partners to concentrate on building the best possible components. This talk will highlight the advantages of Agile high-tech development, using as an example real-life cases, such as the development of crucial components for a multi-beam scanning electron microscope.

Remco Jager is a project manager at Technolution Advance, a company that supports startups, scale-ups, and leading innovative manufacturers to bring advanced, innovative ideas to market quickly. Building upon 18 years of experience with the development of solutions for the semiconductor industry, Jager realizes cutting-edge innovations for a wide range of customers in high tech. He has a broad and detailed technical understanding and a talent for creating overview and shaping processes.

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Developing your own custom chip, is it also within your reach?

You want to stay ahead of your competitors by bringing the best product to the market, at the right time and at the right price point. Developing your own custom chip (ASIC) could be the best strategy for you. With one single-chip implementation, you could boost computational performance, massively cut power consumption and product size, and reduce unit cost. Moreover, ASICs are very difficult to copy, so protecting your IP is relatively straightforward. Despite these obvious advantages, creating an ASIC is often perceived as a difficult process – with development cost and time as the main hurdles. This talk will demonstrate that this perception is often no longer valid. ASIC development is well within reach for many companies, even if they’re not yet acquainted with the process. As director of business development at Imec.IC-link, Bas Dorren will talk from his experience of managing many ASIC projects in a wide range of technologies for a large customer base worldwide. He will explain what it takes to make an ASIC in terms of knowledge, cost and time. And he will make clear what the benefits could be for you.

Bas Dorren spent more than 20 years in various technical and commercial roles of several semiconductor companies. More than 10 years ago, he joined Imec.IC-link, Imec’s ASIC services group. Currently, he manages the business development activities. His team provides flexible turnkey ASIC services, including ASIC development and supply chain services to startups, SMEs and established OEMs, as well as universities, IC design houses and system companies. Dorren holds an MSc degree in physics from Utrecht University and a PhD degree in physics from Eindhoven University of Technology.

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The accidental startup – from research project to mass market

In 2005, when Iris Soute together with two fellow students designed an outdoor, interactive game based on the board game “Colonists of Catan,” she never imagined that this small project would grow out into a company selling a product worldwide. This talk will take you along the path that she followed, from the duct-taped prototype to Picoo today.

Iris Soute is the inventor and co-founder of Picoo. Originally trained as a mechanical engineer, she worked for 3 years at Philips as a software engineer. Then she returned to the university to study user interaction design, followed by a PhD in industrial design. Picoo is the result of Soute’s PhD research into interactive gaming solutions for children. Currently, she is CEO of Picoo; she manages general affairs and is responsible for game design, strategic planning and customer relations.

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Truly platform-independent and scalable real-time embedded neural network inference

Easics’ NearbAI technology allows you to configure and optimize a semiconductor IP core that performs real-time low-latency low-power neural network inference in a small package. It is platform-independent both in the way you train and capture your neural networks and in the hardware component on which you map the IP core. This talk will compare the performance between two FPGA targets and one ASIC target of the same neural network implemented using NearbAI.

Ramses Valvekens is managing director of Easics since the management buy-out in 2004. Besides his role as CSO, active in the NearbAI product line of low-latency embedded neural network inference engines, he also takes up a system architect role, focusing on technology selection, project risk reduction and cost-effective mixed-signal ASIC and FPGA design trade-offs. He holds a master’s degree in electronics engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, performed research at Grenoble INP and was a research scholar at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories in California. He is co-inventor of two telecom patents.

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Chasing bugs – Using AI (and more) for a production-quality system to count insects on glue traps

How can you truly implement AI-aided solutions on a day-to-day basis? Let us walk you through a successful case of deploying an AI system. Sounds easy: counting flies on a glue trap in a greenhouse. Complexity comes with all interacting components. Think: change management on daily ways of working, enabling a mobile camera to take pictures, data labeling, choosing the right image recognition algorithm, using the phone as an edge device, connecting to a cloud data lake, and creating an app to steer AI-driven actions.

Frank van der Linden is product owner of the Itility AI Factory, steering toward building blocks to deploy and run AI solutions. His knowledge spans across digital transformations, infrastructure automation, data analytics, SRE, as well as horticulture, brewing, crypto and more.

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10 ways to make your startup fail

Entrepreneurship is more hyped than ever, but many start companies with limited understanding of what is required to build a successful enterprise. Based on 30 years of experience in starting, advising and investing in companies, this talk shares 10 lessons that were learned the hard and costly way.

Jan Bosch is a professor of software engineering at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, and director of the Software Center, a strategic collaboration between 17 large European companies (including Ericsson, Volvo Cars, Volvo Trucks, Saab Defense, Scania, Siemens and Bosch) and five universities focused on digitalization. He also holds a part-time position as professor of AI engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. He received a MSc degree from the University of Twente, the Netherlands, and a PhD degree from Lund University, Sweden. His research activities include digitalisation, evidence-based development, business ecosystems, artificial intelligence and machine/deep learning, software architecture, software product families and software variability management. In the startup space, he’s an angel investor in several startup companies.

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The model is the easy part

Many AI/ML/DL projects fail to go beyond the experimentation and prototyping phase. Successful deployment of ML/DL models in large systems requires AI engineering. This talk presents an overview of what else is needed to deploy ML/DL models in production-quality, industry-strength systems.

Jan Bosch is a professor of software engineering at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, and director of the Software Center, a strategic collaboration between 17 large European companies (including Ericsson, Volvo Cars, Volvo Trucks, Saab Defense, Scania, Siemens and Bosch) and five universities focused on digitalization. He also holds a part-time position as professor of AI engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. He received a MSc degree from the University of Twente, the Netherlands, and a PhD degree from Lund University, Sweden. His research activities include digitalisation, evidence-based development, business ecosystems, artificial intelligence and machine/deep learning, software architecture, software product families and software variability management. In the startup space, he’s an angel investor in several startup companies.

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Technology organization processes: how to transform while keeping the shop open

To keep your competitive edge, you need to innovate, which means to transform your organization to adopt new technologies to perform better in the end. In practice, this is very challenging. What is the added value of the new technology? What processes do you need to create or adapt to capture this added value? What is the impact on your teams and their required skills and mindsets? These are three major questions that you need to address when considering new technology to improve business. At Thermo Fisher Scientific, we are working on using model-based testing techniques to manage the complexity of developing, testing and maintaining the interfaces between software components. These techniques enable via modeling the automatic generation and execution of test cases. At ICT, we are supporting Thermo Fisher Scientific in adopting these new techniques. Thermo Fisher Scientific is a large organization, their software is complex, their market is highly competitive and their customers highly demanding. This talk explains how ICT and Thermo Fisher Scientific are answering the three major questions above. At the end, the main question remains: how do we effectively explore and discover the added value of a technology like model-based testing, the processes and the skills required to succeed?

Julien Schmaltz is a principal consultant at ICT Group guiding customers in the digitalization of their software engineering process. He holds a PhD degree in electrical engineering from the University of Grenoble, France. Before joining ICT, he was an associate professor in computer science at Eindhoven University of Technology conducting research and education in the field of model-driven engineering with applications to hardware and software systems. Together with universities, he is actively engaged in facilitating the transfer of technology created by academic research to the market through cooperation with students and spin-off companies.

Arjen Klomp is responsible for software technology, integration and test at Thermo Fisher Scientific in Eindhoven. He joined the company in 2017. After his graduation in computer science from the University of Twente, he had various roles in software development, starting as a developer and then growing into architecture and technical leadership roles. In these roles, he worked on a variety of products ranging from high-volume consumer products to low-volume high-tech products. The common thread always was and is to find innovative and better ways to develop software, either with new technologies or quickly adopting new ways of working.

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Diagnosis and health assessment for zero unscheduled downtime

Reasoning from the symptoms towards the cause of an unwanted behavior (diagnostics) of a complex high-tech system is a difficult brain teaser – potentially a very expensive one: every minute matters. This talk presents an hybrid AI framework, developed in collaboration with Canon Production Printing, that combines machine data, models derived from the system’s design and optimal tests to quickly pinpoint the most likely cause of the system malfunction. It also sketches how this approach can evolve into predictive maintenance.

Event BC Leonardo Barbini

Leonardo Barbini is a research fellow at ESI working in the areas of probabilistic reasoning and knowledge engineering for diagnostics and prognostics of high-tech systems. His main research interest is developing a set of computational tools that allow humans to quicker resolve machine problems.

Event BC Emile van Gerwen

Emile van Gerwen is a research fellow at ESI. He has a strong industrial background in software-centric high-tech systems. His passion is bringing mathematical sound principles into the jungle of practical system engineering. The areas he worked in include probabilistic decision support systems, error-free event-driven control software and diagnostic reasoners that combine design knowledge with machine sensor data.

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Software rejuvenation in a high-tech development environment

At Nexperia ITEC, we already have a 30+ years history in back-end assembly equipment development. This has resulted in a significant large and complex codebase. In the dynamic development environment of ITEC, we started rejuvenating our codebase for more efficient and structured code development. For this, we have started a partnership with ESI in the Bright program. One of the goals is to rejuvenate our codebase by applying innovative tooling to support the software refactoring tasks. This talk will present the activity of automatically transferring visual inspections integrated in the Adat die bonder software application. Since there are many instances of visual inspection tasks connected up to 14 camera positions in this system, the main challenge was to run data-driven code analysis to learn the specific instance of inspection calls in the application. By doing automatic transformations, a serious development speed-up, an improved code quality and a more maintainable code base have been achieved.

Raymond Rosmalen has more than 20 years of experience in the field of machine vision. He studied physics at the Radboud University in Nijmegen and did his PhD on high-energy physics contributing to the LEP experiment at CERN. Currently, he is the machine vision technology architect at ITEC. ITEC develops back-end semiconductor assembly equipment with integrated and standalone machine vision solutions. The main challenge is the increasing quality inspection criteria combined with the increasing system speed requirements to achieve lowest cost of ownership. This requires highly efficient and optimized inspection solutions and a continuous drive to explore new vision technologies.

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Preventing regressions for software changes

What does this part of my software do? How does it behave in different situations? And why does a software change cause a regression in a seemingly unrelated part of my system? Understanding software behavior is becoming more and more essential to handle the complexity of high-tech systems. ESI developed and applied model inference to automatically obtain software behavior models that provide valuable insights. These models can be compared to quickly determine the impact of software changes on the system behavior, and locate potential regressions before the software is deployed. How can this help you?

Event BC Dennis Hendriks

Dennis Hendriks is a senior research fellow at ESI and a part-time researcher at the Radboud University Nijmegen. His research area is software behavior. He makes academic formal methods ready for industrial use through applied research, bringing academia and industry together for win-win collaboration and creating real impact together.

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Resilience in evolving software systems

Imagine a system that, once turned on, will stay operational for the rest of its life. Hardware parts may break or go obsolete, software components may crash, cyber attacks are part of everyday life and knowledge of the system itself becomes volatile. Critical systems in general are software intensive and have life times of 30 years and longer. Just imagine how such systems should be designed and what challenges we have to conquer. Together with partners, Thales has developed an open architecture (Inaetics) in 2016 that addresses these challenges. Today, a number of areas for improvements have been identified and put on the agenda for the Inaetics Extended project. This talk will present the challenges we need to conquer.

Event BC Rene van Hees

René van Hees worked for several software companies in both the Netherlands and Germany before he started at Thales Netherlands in 2002. In his role of chief software architect, he is responsible for all technological, process, methodology, architectural and innovation-related aspects concerning the development of (real-time embedded) radar sensor software.

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Managing complexity of high-tech systems – the next generation

The Dutch high-tech equipment builders are all leaders in their markets, owing to their strength to handle the complexity of the systems they create. This talk will discuss how the industry must now prepare for the next levels of complexity, as their systems are getting integrated in complex workflows (effectively becoming systems-of-systems), are including more and more AI and are becoming subject to continuous upgrades. This calls for a new generation of methodologies and ways-of-working, like MBSE (model-based systems engineering) and open-source tooling. In addition, it calls for quickly getting a new generation of engineers up to speed, moving from intricate and outdated documentation to models as means to quickly capture and share the essence of complex systems. And finally, it raises the question how to educate the next generation of engineers to equip them with the systems thinking skills needed to deal with this next generation of complexity.

Event BC Wouter Leibbrandt

Wouter Leibbrandt is science and operations director of ESI (TNO). Before joining ESI in 2016, he was with NXP Semiconductors for 10 years, where he managed the Advanced Applications Lab.

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Why you want to create a highly effective engineering environment to unleash your software engineers

Products are becoming more complex, companies are continuously pressured to accelerate their product development process, regulations are becoming more strict, new engineering technologies and methodologies are introduced to the market in a constant pace, software is becoming dominant in the value creation of products. On top of this, the shortage of engineers is becoming a limiting factor for the time to market of products. A paradigm shift is needed in the thinking of companies to address these challenges. Hyper-scaled automation is key to answer these challenges. Steps towards this far-reaching engineering automation have been taken in the development of software for Nearfield Instruments. Focusing on the increase of the value creation per engineer, Capgemini shifted efforts to maximize the results of reasoning, analyzing, validating and verifying the engineering process by applying a range of automation solutions. The resulting environment combines cost-effectiveness with high productivity and high quality and, as a bonus, frees up scarce highly qualified engineers for value creation. This talk will give insight into the benefits an highly effective engineering environment brings to the development of Nearfield’s highly complex probe systems.

Since the beginning of 2019, Arjen van Elteren is lead software architect at Nearfield Instruments. From 2009-2019, he worked as a senior software engineer/architect for the Leiden Observatory . Before that, he was as a software engineer atcompanies such as ASM and HP.

After finishing his study in technical computer science at the University of Applied Sciences in Venlo, Thijs Geurts started his career more than 30 years ago at AT&T Bell Labs in Hilversum, where he was involved in digital transformation projects for at that time the flagship product of AT&T. Following a short period at Océ (1995-1997), working on the new fully digital copiers, he went to Bell Labs, Chicago, USA, for almost four years, leading one of the digital transformation projects. From 2001-2012, he worked for Imtech in many industries, including telecom, high tech, marine & offshore, building technologies and government, focusing on reducing product development costs, improving product quality and speeding up product market introduction. Since 2012, he’s at Capgemini Engineering, leading software engineering programs and developing solution portfolios for various industries, with a clear focus on engineering automation.
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Taking formal methods mainstream

In academia, we refer to computing science. In industry, we refer to software engineering. An engineer is a skilled technician who develops and applies scientific knowledge to solve technological problems. Too often in practice software people must resort to skillful tinkering as opposed to sound engineering. That’s why at Verum, we’ve dedicated ourselves to the development and application of scientific knowledge to solve the technological problems underlying this phenomenon. To meet these challenges head on, we’re developing a language that enables building reactive systems at industrial scale. The language offers built-in verification and allows for reasoning about both the problem and the solution. It’s complemented by tooling that automates every development aspect from specification, construction, and documentation to verification and validation. In this talk, we’ll present what we’ve achieved and what will come tomorrow, when we stop tinkering in software development.
Rutger van Beusekom holds an MSc in mechanical engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology. From 1999-2005, he worked as a software engineer at Philips CFT. From 2005-2007, he was a software engineer and team lead at Philips Research. Since 2007, he’s been at Verum, in the roles of consultant, software engineer, team shepherd, architect and CTO, working together with and at ASML, Ericsson, FEI, Philips and other customers.
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Developing for safety and security

Software systems have exploded in complexity, leading to an enormous increase in the number of vulnerabilities available for exploitation by bad players. This effects safety as safety and security are inexorably linked. Cars today have one hundred million lines of code, but should we be proud or ashamed? Developing systems that need to be safe and secure will require a shift in thinking away from huge monolithic to minimalistic, component-based that enables components to be fully validated and tested, to eliminate vulnerabilities. This talk explains how we need to change software development to make security and safety the main criteria.
Chris Tubbs is an industry veteran with 46 years’ experience in the avionics, simulation, medical, automotive and software industries. After 15 years in the aerospace industry managing safety-critical systems, he co- founded companies in the simulation and medical-imaging markets in the roles of commercial and managing director. He then spent eight Years in the automotive industry in Germany and the Netherlands as a development and business development manager, after which he joined Green Hills Software in 2008. He was promoted to Director of Business Development EMEA in 2012, since when he has specialized in safety and security.
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Remodeling legacy software

Have you ever considered remodeling your kitchen, while continuing to cook in it? It may not sound obvious, but that’s exactly what this talk is about. Within Kulicke & Soffa, high-tech pick & place machines are developed for the semiconductor industry. For the development of these machines, a software stack is used, the development of which started more than a decade ago. Over the course of years, different machine types were developed from this codebase, which led to a situation where alternative flows are implemented in various areas of the code base. Therefore, the decision was made to group product-type-specific code. Constrained by feature development, that should continue in the same code base. Remodeling while cooking! This talk will take you through the remodeling and the challenges that come with it.
Corné van de Pol is a software architect and trainer at Alten Nederland. This gave him the opportunity to work for a range of companies, including Philips, Vanderlande, ASML and Kulicke & Soffa. He enjoys learning and helping others and with over 10 years of experience as a professional software engineer, he got specialized in agile software development and object-oriented design and clean code.
Erik Onstenk is lead software architect at Kulicke & Soffa Netherlands. He joined Kulicke & Soffa (formerly Assembléon) in 2007. Over the years, he worked on the control software of the entire machine portfolio. His current focus is redefining the reference architecture to better suite recent developments and facilitate future expansions.
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Why high process compliance is no guarantee for good software quality

In the automotive industry, Aspice is used for measuring an organization’s capability to develop high-quality software. Companies supplying software to automotive manufacturers  are required to have a minimum maturity level to ensure that they deliver that high quality. Still, having high-quality processes in place and complying with them is no guarantee. To see why that is and what else is needed to assure high quality software, we first need to understand the many different aspects of software quality and the influence they have. In this talk, Ger Cloudt will present a holistic view on software quality using the 1+3 SQM approach, addressing the consequences of high or low quality for each of the four defined quality types.

Ger Cloudt studied electronics at the University of Applied Sciences in Venlo (the Netherlands). At companies like Philips, NXP and Bosch, he has gained more than 35 years of experience in in-product software development across different industries, including industrial automation, healthcare, automotive, semiconductors, security and building technologies. After having developed software for over 15 years, he became a software development manager, leading numerous engineering teams. During all these years, he developed a vision on what really matters in software development, which he has encapsulates in his book “What is software quality?”.
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Opportunities and challenges of high-throughput 3D metrology equipment for semiconductor process control

With the shipment of its first system to a high-end chip manufacturer, Nearfield Instruments proves that the semiconductor market is very much open to innovative solutions for advanced process control metrology. This first product, Quadra, can measure in-line and in great detail (ångstroms) the on-surface high-aspect-ratio (10:1) features of integrated circuits. The company is now scaling up to deliver dozens of its scanning probe metrology systems per year.

Nearfield founder Hamed Sadeghian foresees the Quadra metrology platform to be the basis for several products and product lines. All of them will solve different problems the semiconductor industry is facing to follow Moore’s Law with its ever smaller and 3D features. Nearfield is expecting to deliver its second product line based on the Quadra platform next year. This system will be able to image, non-destructively, subsurface structures with nano-precision.

In this talk, Hamed Sadeghian will highlight the major requirements for developing non-destructive 3D high-volume manufacturing metrology equipment in the semiconductor industry, the architecture of Quadra (including software) and the challenges faced and overcome. He will also address the impact of the system architecture on the outsourcing strategy to the high-tech supply chain.

Hamed Sadeghian received his PhD (cum laude) in 2010 from Delft University of Technology. Four years later, he obtained an MBA degree from the Vlerick Business School in Belgium. He is the founder (2001) of Jahesh Poulad Co., a manufacturer of mechanical equipment.

Hamed was a principal scientist and Kruyt member of TNO and led a team of thirty researchers in nano-optomechatronic instrumentation at TNO in Delft from 2011 to 2018. In 2016, he co-founded Nearfield Instruments and is currently CEO/CTO at this scale-up that recently shipped its first in-line metrology system to a high-end chip manufacturer.

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How we changed the world using silicon-based phased arrays: leaving the Marconi era and entering the directive communications era

Affordable phased arrays, built using low-cost silicon chips, have become an essential technology for high-data-rate terrestrial (5G) and satellite (satcom) systems because of their high gain, electronically steerable patterns, narrow beam widths, high tolerance to interference and adaptive nulling capabilities. They have also become the backbone of all LEO and MEO satellites (non-geostationary), both at the payload level and at the user terminal. High-EIRP, high-performance systems at X, Ku and Ka-bands and 60 GHz with analog and digital beamforming capabilities and with multiple beams are now available at low cost due to the immense commercial investments placed in the past 5 years. These advances are reshaping our communication and radar/sensor systems, as we work to change our world from the Marconi era given by low-gain broadcast and user-terminal antennas to the directive communications era where every antenna, every beam, every sensor is electronically steered. This talk summarizes our work in this area and presents a roadmap for the future.

Gabriel Rebeiz keynote Benelux RF Conference

Gabriel Rebeiz is Member of the National Academy (elected for his work on phased arrays) and a Distinguished Professor and the Wireless Communications Industry Endowed Chair at the University of California, San Diego. He is an IEEE Fellow, and is the recipient of the IEEE MTT Microwave Prize (2000, 2014, 2020), all for phased arrays. His 2×2 and 4×4 RF beamforming architectures are now used by Renesas, ADI, NXP, Infineon, Sivers, Qualcomm, Intel, Samsung, Boeing and others, and most companies developing communication and radar systems. All satcom affordable phased arrays are based on his work and architectures.

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High-performance dataflow and in-memory computing architecture for AI at the edge

Recent advances in deep learning have transformed the way computing devices process human-centric content such as images, video, speech and audio. However, the AI technology available today has been designed primarily for cloud computing operations, a sector with considerably less constraints in terms of cost, power and scalability. Axelera AI’s mission is to provide a green (low power consumption) hardware and software platform that enables the industry to take full advantage of what AI can bring. Our technology integrates a custom dataflow architecture with multicore in-memory computing, delivering extremely high performance – hundreds of TOPS – at very low wattage, with flexibility to support multiple networks. This talk will cover today’s challenges to deploy AI at the edge, how Axelera AI is innovating with a disruptive technology for machine learning inference and our vision for the future of AI at the edge.

Fabrizio Del Maffeo holds a master’s degree in (wireless) telecommunication engineering from Politecnico di Milano. From 2014-2019, he was VP and managing director of Aaeon Europe in Eindhoven. As such, he was also responsible for worldwide AI development and worked closely with Intel and its AI subsidiary Movidius to enable an AI ecosystem. In 2019, he joined the Amsterdam-based emerging-technologies expert Bitfury to head its new AI venture. Last July, this venture was spun out as Axelera AI, of which he became the CEO.

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Understanding complex embedded systems behavior

This talk will go beyond traditional debug solutions and discuss adding alternative logging techniques that allow even the most complex, virtualized embedded systems to be efficiently analyzed and optimally understood. The key is combining the logged data with a high-performance visualization tool with capabilities to understand the environment the logged data is captured in, creating a comprehensive graphical view of the system behavioral history. This is a game changer for understanding and optimizing complex embedded systems.

Marcus Nissemark is a field application engineer for Green Hills Software, a company leading in the embedded market across all industry sectors, delivering safe and secure software solutions for 40 years, including many automotive systems. Before joining Green Hills in 2014 in Sweden, Marcus worked as a software architect and developer of embedded products since 1999. Such products included controllers and display computers for heavy vehicles, medical and military-grade equipment. His experience covers multiple operating systems, device driver development as well as process and product management challenges in software development.

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Will transformers transform computer vision at the edge?

Transformer models have revolutionized natural language processing, achieving astounding results on a wide range of language applications. More recently, transformers have also been applied to computer vision tasks such as object classification, detection and segmentation, attaining state-of-the-art results on standard benchmark datasets. However, these vision transformers are usually pretrained on extremely large datasets and may consist of billions of parameters, requiring teraflops of compute. Furthermore, the self-attention mechanism inherent to classical transformers builds on quadratically-complex computations. These aspects of vision transformers make them unsuitable for computer vision at the edge. This talk will cover recent advances in vision transformers that may alleviate some of these problems. We’ll explore the advantages and disadvantages of vision transformers and compare them to alternative, simpler yet still performant, model architectures.

Bram Verhoef has a background in statistics, psychology and neuroscience. After receiving his PhD in 2010 from KU Leuven, he conducted post-doctoral research at Harvard University and the University of Chicago, focusing on the computational neuroscience underlying attention mechanisms. In 2017, he returned to Belgium to work at Imec as a principal member of technical staff, leading the algorithm development related to a novel analog compute-in-memory deep learning chip. In 2021, he co-founded Axelera AI and is currently head of machine learning, leading the algorithm optimization efforts for Axelera AI’s state-of-the-art deep learning accelerator.
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Intelligent diagnostics meets model-based systems engineering

The high-tech industry is facing an increasing demand from customers to deliver performance and availability-based contracts. Simultaneously it’s challenged by the increasing complexity of its systems. This turns the development of a diagnostic approach into a difficult engineering task in itself. In this talk, ESI(TNO) will present their approach to embed diagnostics into the current development process and reduce the overhead for the R&D organizations by using hybrid AI techniques.

Carmen Bratosin TNO ESI
Carmen Bratosin is a project manager at ESI (TNO) managing projects in the area of diagnostics and testing. She has more than 15 years of experience of applying cutting-edge technology in different fields, including data science, model-driven development and diagnostics, at companies such as Canon Production Printing, Philips and ASML.
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Patterns and antipatterns in high-tech software outsourcing

Outsourcing allows an OEM to focus on its core functionality and have access to technology experts who aren’t available at the OEM. The outsourcing provider in turn will need to understand the domain and underlying technologies and be able to facilitate a long-term commitment. This comes with its own challenges: How does the outsourcing provider acquire and persist the required domain knowledge? How does the outsourcing provider maintain an optimal interaction with the OEM when they’re not co-located? Each OEM will have its own software development process. How will the outsourcing partner make sure that they ‘interface’ in the correct way with this OEM?

Over de course of the last ten years, Alten has made an exciting journey where its focus changed from primarily consultancy to a mix of providing outsourcing services and consultancy. This new strategy hasn’t gone unnoticed and during the last three years, we’ve been awarded with an A rating as best outsourcing partner at ASML, exceeding their expectations. In this journey, a new way of working had to be adopted. In this talk, Robert van Uden tells about this journey and shares patterns and antipatterns, which are also valuable to other high-tech software development parties.

Robert van Uden works as a software architect in the Alten Delivery Center.

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How (not) to sell technical debt?

Companies are continuously pressured to accelerate their product delivery while the products they develop become increasingly advanced and complex. On top of this, the engineers required for product development become ever scarcer. After having exhausted process optimizations with Agile development processes, focus now needs to shift to continuously increasing the value creation per engineer. Engineers are most effective in solving essential complexity enabled by adequate paradigms, formalisms, abstractions and (automation) tools, integrated into a coherent engineering environment. This talk will give insights into the challenges involved in developing and providing this engineering environment, and proposes an organizational change to realize it and keep delivering end-customer value.
Dirk Jan Swagerman
Having seen the full spectrum of system and software development, from embedded in complex systems, web applications and image processing involving AI algorithms, Dirk-Jan Swagerman understands that software is both an asset and a debt. As an independent consultant, he helps businesses transform legacy code, improve agility and train teams in system and software architecture and integration. Dirk-Jan is experienced with execution on different levels and builds strong cross-functional and cross-site relationships. He brings sustainable quality and craftsmanship to your organization, resulting in lower cost of non-quality and better returns on your innovation investment.
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Keeping the same organization while expecting better engineering performance? Insanity!

Companies are continuously pressured to accelerate their product delivery, while the products they develop become increasingly advanced and complex. On top of this, the engineers required for product development become ever scarcer. After having exhausted process optimizations with Agile development processes, focus now needs to shift to continuously increase the value creation per engineer. Engineers are most effective in solving essential complexity enabled by adequate paradigms, formalisms, abstractions and (automation) tools, integrated into a coherent engineering environment. This talk will give insights into the challenges involved in developing and providing this engineering environment, and proposes an organizational change to realize it and keep delivering end-customer value.
Niels holds an MSc degree in computer science from Eindhoven University of Technology. More than 15 years of deploying model-based engineering approaches in the high-tech industry of the Netherlands have taught him that introducing even a significant improvement in an software R&D organization has numerous challenges. In his role as an MDE solution architect, he’s part of the definition and execution of continuous improvement programs to assist clients in increasing their engineering performance, with a clear focus on engineering automation.
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How do we keep the supply chain secure?

Hostage software, phishing, vulnerable software and other forms of unauthorized access to servers and networks – all of which makes every company a potential prey for cybercriminals. And because of the interconnectedness in the chain, it’s no longer enough to have one’s own cybersecurity in order. Cybercriminals are increasingly hacking into their ultimate targets via suppliers and business partners. Cybersecurity in the supply chain is a many-headed monster. It’s clear that there’s no silver bullet to prevent problems, both structural and specific. However, that doesn’t mean that every organization should simply wait for the first incident to happen before taking action. In this talk, TNO specifies three concrete steps towards improved digital security in the supply chain.
Dimitri Hehanussa is responsible for portfolio management for the cybersecurity knowledge and solutions development for TNO ICT and has been at TNO since 2008. He has extensive experience in the internet and telecom industry over the last 15 years at companies like Samsung, Sara and Versatel/Tele2.
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Automating maintenance: the way out of the software renovation paradox

Necessary maintenance on complex legacy systems is not done to avoid palpable and immediate risks. Not changing code that works is a well-motivated, well-considered engineering decision from the short to medium-term perspective (quarters and years). On the other hand, everything always changes, and so not renovating is a risk that’s no less real. Eventually, and always, software renovation becomes an existential matter: either move forward or give up. However, at that same time, the code will have grown beyond our capacity of understanding it. To overcome the limitations of human comprehension, in a recent collaboration between CWI, TUE and Philips, we used the Rascal metaprogramming language and its Clair C++ front-end to automatically analyze and transform a large legacy C++ test system to bring it up-to-date with the latest technical standards. Learning how to analyze and transform source code without having to read everything is rapidly becoming an essential skill for professional software engineers.
Jurgen Vinju is a part-time full professor at Eindhoven University of Technology, a senior researcher at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica and co-owner of Swat.engineering. His research and engineering efforts are all targeted at managing software complexity through metaprogramming: software that analyses, manipulates, generates or visualizes the source code of other software. Rascal is the metaprogramming language that he co-designed and implemented, which is applied to a wide variety of software engineering challenges in research, education and industry.
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Legacy code transformation at Philips Healthcare

Within Philips, the business unit Image Guided Therapy Systems develops X-ray systems for cardiac and vascular medical diagnosis and intervention. These systems have a very long lifecycle, which requires regular refactoring to keep the codebase healthy. This talk will focus on how we apply software rejuvenation using compiler techniques, in particular static dependency visualization and refactoring. This will be highlighted using real-world examples of large-scale (semi)automated refactoring cases.
Daan van der Munnik started as a software architect at Philips Healthcare. After making a sidestep as IT director of an ISP startup, he returned to software development in 2003. He’s worked on bridging the gap between the IT world and the R&D world, being globally responsible for software development tooling in Philips. Currently, he manages the software development in the Imaging Chain Cluster within Image Guided Therapy Systems.
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Streamlining R&D and QA by eliminating wasteful recalculations​

Scientific computing presents unique challenges in managing calculated results. Large data sets and resource-intensive algorithms mean that results should be reused wherever possible, while complex computing networks and workflows make it difficult to determine when it’s safe to do so.

Cradle leverages constructs from functional programming to address these challenges. Algorithms are encapsulated into functional blocks whose results are reproducible and depend only on their inputs. Rather than executing algorithms directly, clients declare functional compositions of these blocks, as applied to external inputs. Cradle then resolves these calculation trees to values, executing functions where necessary but also leveraging cached results from previous executions safely and automatically (ie applying memoization).

We’ve implemented a clinical treatment planning system on top of Cradle, along with an accompanying set of tools for R&D. Beyond the primary goal of safely eliminating unnecessary recalculations, we’ve found that the use of Cradle comes with numerous side benefits: automatic leveraging of implicit parallelism in calculation graphs, transparency into calculation structures, an improved R&D experience, easier forensics and debugging and, perhaps most importantly, vastly simpler application code.

Tom Madden is a system designer at Massachusetts General Hospital in proton radiotherapy. His focus is on developing software for analyzing and optimizing the physical interactions of high-energy protons with human tissue. He has a passion for declarative computation models and how they can be applied to resource-intensive, interactive software applications.
Hanne Kooy is a professor in radiation oncology medical physics. His focus is on the specification and deployment of proton radiotherapy support systems. These include the proton beam delivery control system, phenomenological and monte carlo algorithms for modeling dose transport in patients, dose prescription optimization problems, data management and their end-to-end integration in the clinical practice. He trained in engineering physics at Delft University of Technology and experimental high-energy physics at Syracuse and Cornell Universities.
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TROPOMI: From a kitchen table idea to a world renowned atmospheric chemistry instrument

In his presentation Bryan de Goeij will focus on the early development phases of the TROPOMI instrument. The TROPOMI instrument was successfully launched on board of the Sentinel 5 Precursor satellite on 13 October 2017. Since its launch TROPOMI has delivered NO2, CH4, O3, CO2 and other trace gasses concentration maps with unprecedented spatial resolution of 7x7km2. In this way new and unknown sources of greenhouse gasses were found and our insight in the climate change improved.
He will start by discussing the architecture phase, were the needs and wishes of the atmospheric scientist were identified and transformed into an opto-mechanical architecture. As part of this phase also a number of new technologies were identified and their development started.
Next Bryan will discuss the transformation of the program from the architecture phase into the next design and development phase. He will focus on the selection process of the new technologies that would continue in the next program phase and he will discuss the challenges in moving to a firm fixed price project.

Were appropriate Bryan will highlight the differences between the development process implemented in TROPOMI and the process as defined in the ESA ECSS (European Cooperation for Space Standardization) handbooks.

Before joining TNO Bryan de Goeij graduated at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at the TU Delft, in the field of systems integration of spacecraft. At TNO he is now a senior systems engineer with a drive for developing cutting edge opto-mechatronical space systems and for spreading the systems engineering method to other fields within TNO.

His past responsibilities include the development of the Fine Sun Sensors that allow the ESA GAIA satellite to determine it orientation during its mission to chart a three-dimensional map of our Galaxy, the development optical instruments for atmospheric research and global climate monitoring (like TROPOMI) and the development of laser satellite communication systems for aircraft.

Presently he is involved in TNO program to develop small cost-efficient and recurring optical instruments for atmospheric research that fit on small cube satellites, adding additional constraints to the entire SE development process.
At the same time he is involved in the further industrialization and upscaling of hydrogen production facilities.

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Infrastructure embraces operational technology

Heijmans is a construction company, working in areas such as civil and construction engineering. Digitization has also become indispensable for Heijmans, but it is also a great opportunity. Johan van Rosmalen and Bilal Akdeniz want to take you along on how we deal with operational technology within infrastructural projects and what the challenges are for system architects and system engineers. Johan will provide insight into the developments in the field of system architecture of Audio and Video systems and Bilal will reflect what these developments have meant for the working method and systems engineering.

After his study Electrical Engineering at the Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Eindhoven, Johan started at Imtech with the engineering of complex evacuation and security installations. In 2005 Johan switched to Philips Projects / Tyco where he was involved as application manager in complex evacuation and security developments within judicial institutions. This development was driven after the fire of the cell complex at Schiphol. Johan also worked in infrastructure, especially in the field of camera systems for Rijkswaterstaat, the traffic pressure increased and the need for optimization of the national road network increased. Rush-hour lanes were used more widely to absorb peak loads. In 2009 the switch to Heijmans was made. Heijmans saw the need for integrated projects grow in the form of performance contracts, where the risks are placed on contractors. By taking (chain) control yourself, risks can be made manageable. Together with two colleagues, Johan was able to set up his own Heijmans Safety & Security division within Heijmans. Johan works here as a system architect on projects such as: RWS Rush-hour lanes, renovation RWS traffic control centres, A4 Ketheltunnel, N35 Salland-Twente tunnel, A9 Gaasperdammertunnel, Koningstunnel Den Haag, Piet Heintunnel and the renewal of the Amsterdam traffic control centre. Johan has been closely involved with RWS assignment of the building blocks audio and video. With this assignment, RWS and Heijmans enter into a development and innovation assignment for an indefinite period of time for the entire operational audio and video area within RWS.

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The engineering of the James Webb Space Telescope European Instruments: challenges, lessons learned and successes

Precision, sensitive, space-borne instrumentation developments are complex endeavours requiring both specific technical knowledge as well as a fine level of systems engineering (SE) processes definition and control. When faced with additional technical, organizational and operational constraints, the solution space shrinks while the SE effort needs to grow and become more creative to address the challenges that appear.
The JWST project fits clearly this definition. In this talk we will present some of the main challenges encountered in the design, testing and deployment of the European contribution to the JWST instrument suite, the Near Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSpec) and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). We will  try to cover both engineering and organization elements and the lessons learned for aspects like: the limitations to design and test cryogenic instrumentation; the benefits and difficulties of working concurrently with industrial partners, research institutes, universities and different space agencies; and the constraints imposed by projects with lifetimes in excess of 10 years before even starting operations. Although JWST is probably an outlier in science space projects in terms of size and complexity, the return from experience, positive and negative, can be applied to future missions and projects with similar boundary conditions.

A Telecommunications Engineering by education, with a focus on optoelectronic systems, I worked as a Passive Photonic Specialist and as Optical System Designer in different companies before joining the European Space Agency in 2005. Since then I have developed my professional activity in Systems Engineering roles within the Science Projects department with a focus on the mission and payload aspects of space telescope missions in the visible, near and mid-infrared. I held the roles of Systems Engineer and Instrument Manager for the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) in the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) mission until integration in the spacecraft in 2012. From 2012 to 2018 I was the Mission Systems Engineer for the dark-matter Euclid mission and in 2018 I took my current position as Mission and Payload manager for the PLAnetary Transit and Oscillation (PLATO) project. In addition to these roles, I am active in the Systems Engineering area development in ESA, contributing to the definition of SE training programs and in the development of Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) practices). I am a member of the Dutch chapter of INCOSE.

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Virtualization, digital twining, and automation fuel disruptions in systems engineering of backend semiconductor machines

Increasingly challenging performance and reliability requirements are being posed on new generations of assembly and packaging equipment for electronics manufacturing, in addition to their already advanced functionalities. At the same time, firm market competition limits their selling prices. To strengthen the competitive edge in the harsh market of the back-end semiconductor machines, digitalization, virtualization and automation are of increasing importance at the ASM Pacific Technology LTD. Especially innovations in the fields of systems engineering, mechatronics, control technology, digital twining, motion planning and trajectory generation, embedded software development, and machine health management are critical assets for successful market battles.

By several examples of semiconductor bonding equipment, dr. Dragan Kostić will illustrate how systems engineering and optimizations performed in virtual environments facilitate drawing good enough architectural and design decisions, in terms of meeting customer requirements under cost, time and resource constraints. Here, digital twins are of particular importance because of their values in all phases of development, production, and operational use of the ASMPT products.

Dr. Kostić will also present a disruption towards control technology 4.0, which allows that the same semicon machine, without any hardware changes, achieves higher throughputs than anticipated by conventional systems engineering methods.

Dr.ir. Dragan Kostić is the R&D Director for Mechatronics Enabling Technology at the ASMPT Center of Competency in Beuningen. His professional career incorporates different positions at academia and in industry in the fields of mechatronics, robotics and metrology. At ASMPT he heads R&D activities on the problems of digital twin building, simulation, control technology, machine health management, and mechatronics system development.

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Data factory setup in food processing machinery

Data and technology are essential in unlocking value but not the only capabilities you need. Change management and domain vision also play an important role in this. Moreover, you need a systems engineering approach. Challenges will arise every step of the way, so the key here is not trying to solve everything at the same time but to keep taking small steps forward toward the end goal. Find out how we applied this in our pizza case.

Xander Janssen started as a project manager and Scrum master, then picked up security and IT within Itility, and designed training courses for the Itility Academy. Now, as a practice lead, he’s responsible for the systems & data practice. His personal passions and experiences are (Agile) project management, people management, training and development, security and all technologies in the broadest sense.
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The future of space based connectivity

Laser communication for space-based coms has become a major topic with massive market potential for the Dutch space and opto-mechatronics ecosystem. To this date, significant investments have been made to build and test state-of-the-art laser communication system demonstrators within TNO and its partners. Demonstrators range from airborne terminals, ground stations and space terminals. These developments are now entering a phase where all building blocks come together for the first time, resulting in hardware that will be launched to low earth orbit, providing an experimental platform such that the end-to-end experimentation can begin. In this talk, a summary of the CubeCAT project (CubeSAT laser communication terminal) and GOCAT projects (optical ground station) will be presented.

Will Crowcombe is currently active in the field of optical satellite communication within the Dutch space ecosystem. After obtaining a master’s degree in mechanical engineering at Imperial College London, he pursued his career in the aerospace field as an system mechanical architect and lead designer. In 2012, he started working for TNO where he has been a system engineer in both the Semicon Equipment and the Space domains. He is now one of the driving forces of setting up the Optical Satellite Communication Program within the Netherlands where he acts as a program architect at TNO.

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Machines make people better

Over the last 6 years at Omron, we went through a data science journey in the industrial data science domain with highs and lows. We’ve been exploring products and services to help our customers increase product quality, machine uptime or even change their business models. Ultimately, we think that machines will learn more and more so they can actually support operators and maintenance staff with AI: augmented intelligence. This talk will present our vision and some of the lessons learned, illustrated with an example in a mass production environment.

Tim Foreman is a team player who really feels at home in the international and multicultural environment at Omron Europe, where he started back in 1993 as a software engineer. At Omron, he’s able to put his skills obtained through his PhD and MSc in physics from Utrecht University to practice. He’s held a variety of positions at the company, from project leader to group leader and development manager. In 2007, he was appointed to his current position as European R&D manager at Omron Europe. In 2016, he started the industrial data science journey.
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Life-ready AI is here

At GML, we are in the business of life-ready AI. Artificial intelligence that feels far from artificial. Brain-inspired chips that respond as humans do. GML is proud to be unveiling a future where artificial meets reality with its Grai VIP (Vision Inference Processor). A groundbreaking chip that acts and reacts in real-time, ready for life.

Menno Lindwer is VP IP & Silicon at Grai Matter Labs. He holds a Msc degree from the University of Twente and a PDEng degree in technical computing science from Eindhoven University of Technology. His previous employers include Philips Research and Silicon Hive, which was acquired by Intel. In 2018, he joined AI startup Grai Matter Labs as VP of engineering. Last year, he assumed his current role.

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The development process of the Powder Load Tool

The MetalFAB1 industrial metal 3D printing system is recognized in the metal additive manufacturing industry as one of the safest and most productive systems available. After market introduction Additive Industries has continuously been improving the productivity, quality and safety of the system. The development of the Powder Load Tool has contributed to all these aspects by enabling MetalFAB1 operators to load the metal powder which is used in the printing process straight from transport packaging into to the printing system in an automated way. Sven van Iersel will talk about the development process of this tool. While compared to the MetalFAB1 the core functionality of the Powder Load Tool seems relatively simple, the large number of design constraints and boundary conditions have made the story not as straight forward as one might think.

Sven van Iersel is system engineer at the R&D department of Additive Industries. He has been with the company ever since the first series production systems were shipped in 2016. Before that he had a role as research scientist at TNO Automotive. Sven has a background in Mechanical Engineering / Dynamics & Control.

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The path towards 6G: from millimeter waves to THz

Sub-terahertz and terahertz (THz) waves have frequencies extending from 0.1 THz up to 10 THz and fall in the spectral region between microwaves and optical waves. The prospect of offering large contiguous frequency bands to meet the demand for highest data transfer rates in the terabit/second range makes it a key research area of 6G mobile communication. These efforts require an interdisciplinary approach, with close interaction of high-frequency semiconductor technology for RF electronics but also including alternative approaches using photonic technologies. The THz region also shows great promise for many application areas, ranging from imaging to spectroscopy and sensing. To fully exploit the potential of this frequency range, it’s also crucial to understand the propagation characteristics for the development of the future communication standards by performing channel measurements. This talk will highlight the characteristics of channel propagation in this frequency region and present new results from channel measurements at 158 GHz and 300 GHz.

Fabian Kronowetter is a junior development engineer and PhD candidate at Rohde & Schwarz. He completed his master’s degree in applied and engineering physics in 2019 at the Technical University of Munich. Between 2017 and 2018, he interned in technology development and innovation at Infineon Technologies Austria and Seat. In 2020, he worked as candidate for European Patent Attorney at Grünecker patent attorneys. At Rohde & Schwarz, he conducts his PhD in quantum sensing with a focus on quantum radar applications.

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Characterization methods for antenna-in-package applications at mm-wave frequencies

Due to the need for ever more bandwidth in wireless communication, the next generation communication standard (6G) is set to operate at frequencies beyond 100 GHz. From an electronic packaging point of view, this will mean a widespread adoption of antenna-in-package (AiP) type of devices where a(n) (phased array) antenna system is integrated directly into the device package. This high level of integration, combined with high operational frequencies, poses several challenges – not only for the manufacturing but also for the characterization of materials and performance of the AiPs. At these high frequencies, material characterization and over-the-air device measurement simultaneously become more crucial and more challenging. For this reason, CITC and Antennex started a collaboration to address the characterization needs for these kinds of packaging applications. Leveraging decades of research and experience from Eindhoven University of Technology, Antennex addresses these measurement issues with a variety of characterization and measurement tools and services that can support the development of novel packaging technologies and concepts at CITC. This joint talk takes a look at the various challenges and needs that occur, and different ways to characterize AiPs and materials at frequencies up to 140 GHz, including miniaturized anechoic and reverberation chambers and material characterization techniques.

Sander Bronckers is an assistant professor at Eindhoven University of Technology and co-founder of Antennex, a spinoff from TUE’s electromagnetics group, based on measurement techniques research. He also coordinates the ultra-high-data-rate track in the Centre for Wireless Technology Eindhoven. In the past, he obtained a PhD from TUE (cum laude) and was a guest researcher at NIST on reverberation chamber measurements. His research interests include antenna measurements in reverberation and anechoic chambers, channel sounding and emulation, and RF material characterization, with a main focus on reverberation chamber-based measurement techniques in the mm-wave range.

Francesca Chiappini is program manager at CITC – Chip Integration Technology Center, where she leads a research team focusing on packaging solutions for RF chips operating in the mm-wave domain. She has a background in solid-state physics and obtained her PhD degree from Radboud University in Nijmegen. Since 2016, she’s been working at TNO as a researcher in different departments, including Holst Centre in Eindhoven, where she worked on interconnect technologies for flexible and printed electronics.

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High-volume semiconductor test – where every millisecond counts

For over 30 years, ITEC has been the special force of Philips, NXP and Nexperia, providing best-in-class back-end in-house manufacturing solutions such as automatic test equipment, assembly equipment and factory automation software. Firstly and foremost targeting high-volume production of discrete semiconductors, process throughput increase and capability enhancement has always been a main driver for system development and introduction of new architectures. For the tester portfolio, a major architectural change was implemented in 2002 by the introduction of the microParset platform – very flexible, high performance and very high speed. The nanoParset was introduced later in 2020 to provide a further increase in throughput and measurement performance. New demands in the power discrete and power management IC market are now driving the development of the next-generation power tester: the MegaParset. A major redesign of the software architecture in combination with a new overall system architecture will deliver the world’s fastest power-semiconductor tester. But there are also new challenges on the horizon. As ITEC recently became an independent entity of Nexperia, it should not only consider Nexperia’s current and future demands but also those of other customers. In this talk, Felix Patschkowski and Robin Rieken will share some important challenges regarding performance, evolvability and factory integration.

After completing his graduation assignment on discrete RF oscillators at NXP Semiconductors, Robin Rieken started his career as electronics design engineer in automatic test equipment at NXP’s in-house equipment manufacturer; ITEC. With a passion for process optimization, problem analysis and new capability introductions, he worked on the development of existing and new tester platforms, as well as several highly successful application projects. He is energized by realizing major production throughput improvements and enabling new production capabilities, which helped to develop his expertise in semiconductor test. Ready for the next step in his career, he became a system architect for the next-generation power-semiconductor tester: the MegaParset.

Before migrating to the Netherlands, Felix Patschkowski graduated from the Technical University of Hamburg with a master’s degree in computer science and engineering and started as an automation engineer at Nexperia’s wafer fab in Hamburg. Being responsible for the automation of the wafer test department, he was exposed to ITEC’s technology, especially the tester platforms, right from the beginning. On a business trip to Nijmegen, he fell for the city and technology. Soon after, he started working for ITEC to develop software for existing and new testers. Over time, he grew into the position of a software architect for the latest test platform under development – the MegaParset – and he took the role of a system architect for ITEC’s factory automation solutions.

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The development process of the Powder Load Tool

The MetalFAB1 industrial metal 3D printing system is recognized in the metal additive manufacturing industry as one of the safest and most productive systems available. After market introduction Additive Industries has continuously been improving the productivity, quality and safety of the system. The development of the Powder Load Tool has contributed to all these aspects by enabling MetalFAB1 operators to load the metal powder which is used in the printing process straight from transport packaging into to the printing system in an automated way. Sven van Iersel will talk about the development process of this tool. While compared to the MetalFAB1 the core functionality of the Powder Load Tool seems relatively simple, the large number of design constraints and boundary conditions have made the story not as straight forward as one might think.

Sven van Iersel is system engineer at the R&D department of Additive Industries. He has been with the company ever since the first series production systems were shipped in 2016. Before that he had a role as research scientist at TNO Automotive. Sven has a background in Mechanical Engineering / Dynamics & Control.

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Secure system design

Security needs a preventative mindset. Develop one and make secure coding a second nature!

In this webinar you will learn:

  • About the cat and mouse game of software security
  • The various threats against computer systems
  • Secure design principles
  • How Cydrill courses can raise your paranoia to a healthy level and can contribute to your code hygiene

Outline

Introduction to software security

  • AppSec: The weakest link in cybersecurity

Security by design

  • The STRIDE model of threats
  • Secure design principles of Saltzer and Schroeder
  • Economy of mechanism
  • Fail-safe defaults
  • Complete mediation
  • Open design
  • Separation of privilege
  • Lab – Clickjacking
  • Least privilege
  • Least common mechanism
  • Psychological acceptability

Learning how not to code

Erno has been a software developer for 35 years, half of which he has spent writing, and half breaking code. In the last ten years he is focused on teaching developers how not to code. More than 100 classes in 30 countries add to his track record all around the world.

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System Engineering @ ASML, practice and challenges

In 30 years, ASML has grown into a strategic player in the high-tech semiconductor market.  This Webinar addresses the role of System Engineering. In two presentations, Frank and Tom will discuss the essences of the roadmapping process, the Holistic System Design and the Product Generation Process. From that position they ask themselves what new developments are coming our way and whether it is time for a reassessment towards System Engineering 2.0? 

Frank de Lange received his Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Fine Mechanical Engineering in 1986 from TU-Delft. After several years working abroad and in the Netherlands, he joined ASML in 1991. There he worked the first years as a Manufacturing & Service engineer, then as a project leader for several projects. Since 2006 he is a manager within the System Engineering department. Currently he is closely involved in the development of methodologies related to System Engineering, such as system decomposition, requirement engineering, configuration management and system modeling.

After studying Applied Physics at the TUE and 7 years at Océ Copiers & Printers in Venlo, Tom started at ASML in Veldhoven in 1997 in the brand new System Engineering department.  From this position he has had several roles. Once started as Function SE Metrology & Sensors soon as Platform SE TWINSCAN and later NXT; and in between as Group Leader SE and Technology Roadmap owner for Overlay, Focus and Imaging.  As of 2012, he is shaping the system-of-systems SE work under the name Node SE in the role of Group Leader (15p) and as Project Manager. 

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The system thinker – from a lone wolf to a cooperative pack

Why do systems fail? Often because of their high complexity. Yet, the Dutch industry is remarkably successful in realizing very complex high-tech equipment, thanks to the use of strong system thinking.

In practice, however, the burden of system thinking is often on the head of a lone system architect. Going forward this is a problem. High-tech equipment continues to grow in complexity. It also integrates more and more tightly in its operational context: medical equipment into the hospital and even in the complete care cycle, semiconductor equipment into the fab or a module into the supply chain.

A single person can no longer on her own deal with this system(s) complexity, calling for a much wider spread of system thinking in the organizations. What is “system thinking” and why is adoption across disciplines crucial for future success? How do various means support such wide introduction like methods and tools, such as MBSE, creating awareness and competence development?

Wouter Leibbrandt is Science and Operations Director of ESI, an industry and academia sponsored research center part of TNO. ESI focusses on the development of novel methodologies, often model-based, for design and engineering of increasingly complex high-tech (embedded) systems. It does so in strong partnership and close collaboration with leading high-tech equipment companies as well as with key university groups. Themes are: system architecting, model driven engineering, technical debt and systems in context.

Before joining ESI in 2016 Wouter was with NXP for 10 years, managing the Advanced Applications Lab. Until 2006 he was with Philips Research labs for 14 years, managing a variety of projects and departments in The Netherlands and abroad.

Wouter holds a PhD in physics from Utrecht University.

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Spike-based neuromorphic computing for the edge

Threatened by the approaching limits of silicon scaling, semiconductor industries, and research labs are researching alternative computational approaches for developing more efficient and intelligent computing technologies. Neuromorphic computing and engineering represent promising alternative paradigms for enabling low-power brain-inspired artificial intelligence at the edge. In this approach, brain-inspired models of neural computations, based on massively parallel networks of low-power silicon neurons and synapses, are implemented in novel microelectronic architectures. This talk will describe the current understanding of neural computation and recent efforts in building microchips based on bio-realistic models of spiking neurons. These novel devices represent the third generation of neural networks, which allows us to investigate the possibilities of using time as a resource for computation and communication at the theoretical level. Finally, this talk will showcase some examples of how neuromorphic microchips can impact emerging applications in the robotic, health and IoT sectors.

Federico Corradi is an assistant professor in the Electrical Engineering Department of Eindhoven University of Technology, leading the Neuromorphic Edge Computing Systems Lab. He received a PhD in neuroinformatics and a PhD from the Neuroscience Centre, both in Zurich in 2015. He was a postgraduate at the Institute of Neuroinformatics in 2018. From 2015 to 2018, he was with Inilabs, developing neuromorphic event-based cameras. From 2018 to 2022, he was at Imec, where he started ultra-low-power neuromorphic IC design activities. His passion for research brought him back to academia while he keeps strong ties with companies.
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Liteq 500 for advanced packaging or how to build a litho stepper with a lean team

K&S Liteq originated as a startup to developing a lithography stepper specifically for Advanced Packaging. Advanced Packaging of semiconductor devices is gaining traction because  it enables to keep Moore’s law alive by putting more functionality in a single package. This is known as “More than Moore”, e.g. it enables to combine multiple dies in a single package. After a short introduction on Advanced Packaging, the presentation focuses on the development of the stepper. Developing everything yourself is very costly and requires many manhours. Therefore, a development approach and architecture is chosen that supports to build a stepper with a lean team. This implies focusing on a few core tasks and using as many standard components as possible. In the presentation, the approach is discussed in more detail for both the hardware and software domains.

Jeroen de Boeij - Kulicke&Soffa Liteq

Jeroen de Boeij joined K&S Liteq during the startup phase in the role of system architect. Since 2018 he is part of the management team and since 2021 he is also managing the R&D team. Before K&S Liteq he worked 6 years at FEI/Thermo Fisher Scientific as a control engineer and later as an architect of the sample manipulation group. Via TMC he worked two years at ASML Research. He holds a BSc and MSc in mechanical engineering and a PhD in electrical engineering.

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System evolution through module revolution

For a system architect responsible for development projects of a modular, multidisciplinary product over time, it is a well known dilemma that striving for technology innovation is in conflict with project risk management. After some years of struggling with this dilemma and related conflicts with project managers, a strategy was developed that is worth sharing in this webinar. 

The right approach is dependent of the type of product, but more important is the life phase. The development of the first version of a new system obviously requires a different project plan than the next incremental development of a mature system. A little less obvious may be that the technical choices should also be greatly influenced by these boundary conditions. 

An approach that has proved to work will be presented and illustrated with real life examples from experiences with machines for semiconductor and agriculture robotics applications.

Ad Vermeer is an inventor by nature with 45 patents filed. He is the co-founder and currently technology manager and senior system architect at Cerescon, a start-up/scale-up company focused on developing, producing and selling the first autonomous robot for selective harvesting in the agro market, in this case for white asparagus.

During his career, Ad contributed and was often crucial to the success of various start-ups. He was senior system architect at Liteq, a start-up in lithography equipment for the backend semiconductor market. He also was involved at Solaytec, a high-tech start-up company in spatial atomic layer deposition (SALD) equipment for solar cell producers. Before his start-up adventures, Ad held positions at Philips Assembleon and Philips CFT, where he worked on projects for high-tech equipment companies like ASML.

Ad shares his experience and knowledge a few weeks a year as a trainer for High Tech Institute’s system architect(ing) course.

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TinyML: enabling intelligence at the extreme edge

TinyML strives for powerful machine inference in resource-scarce distributed devices. To allow intelligent applications at ultra-low energy and low latency, one needs compact compute and memory architectures, which are exploited at very high utilization. This has resulted in a wide variety of dedicated hardware accelerator designs proposed in the state of the art. However, it becomes increasingly clear that every intelligent edge device will need to be equipped with a diverse set of many heterogeneous co-processors, which can operate in parallel and execute every workload at the most compatible (combination of) accelerators. This talk will introduce the benefits and challenges of implementing and exploiting such heterogeneous embedded ML systems, supported through practical examples for efficient deep inference.

Marian Verhelst is full professor at the MICAS laboratories of KU Leuven and a research director at Imec. Her research focuses on embedded machine learning, hardware accelerators, HW-algorithm co-design and low-power edge processing. She received a PhD from KU Leuven and worked as a research scientist at Intel Labs in the US. She holds an ERC Starting Grant from the EU, received the 2021 André Mischke YAE Prize, the 2022 Intel Outstanding Researcher Award and was selected among the Inspiringfifty Deeptech Benelux 2021.

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Data-driven availability reporting for ASML’s lithography machines

In chip manufacturing, (up)time is money. This talk explains how we developed a machine learning-enabled and data-driven platform for availability analysis, enabling higher uptime of ASML’s lithography machines.

Benny Renkens is a senior data engineer at ASML. He holds a bachelor’s degree in information science from Zuyd University of Applied Sciences. Prior to joining ASML in 2009, he worked as a software engineer for Philips Healthcare.
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Machine learning works in practice not just theory

The powerful combination of AI and high-performance computing is pushing the boundaries of applied scientific research, adding great value to automated object inspections. And, with technology constantly evolving, developments in this area are set to continue. The development of AI and machine learning models for automated object inspections requires large amounts of data. These AI models will continue to expand and be trained on even greater data sets to make increasingly more accurate decisions. This talk will discuss how we can optimize the performance of these models and reduce their size to run on the edge.

Daan de Cloe is a seasoned entrepreneur with a strong technical background and product development expertise in the global automotive and high-tech industry. As the former managing director of TNO Automotive (Center for Applied Scientific Research), he was responsible for the development and implementation of advanced software solutions to enable automated and autonomous driving. He’s one of the co-founders of Autofill, focusing on the implementation of computer vision and machine learning for automated object inspection.
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Digital fruits are also healthy

Developing a successful stable convolutional neural network is determined by the quality, size and availability of properly labeled data. Acquiring this data can be a time-consuming task. We apply digitally generated data, also known as “synthetic data,” which enables us to decrease lead times while increasing reliability of deep learning in computer vision applications. This talk will focus on a case in the food industry where we’ve generated highly accurate digital twins of fruits and vegetables for training purposes.

Teun Keusters is a deep learning engineer at Qing, where he mainly focuses on the development and deployment of computer vision applications within the agri and food processing industry. By combining technologies such as AI, digital twins and advanced automation, he aims to have a relevant impact on the application of these technologies in the industry.
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Mastering the edge: critical factors to enabling edge computing

There’s no denying that cloud computing has been a top technology over the past two decades. So many of us working from home since the start of the pandemic would have been impossible not that long ago. Even though the cloud is key for today, it can’t handle the technologies of the future. Self-driving cars are a perfect example. They need to make ultra-fast, perfectly accurate decisions. There’s no time to wait for data to be processed in a data center. This is where edge computing comes in. Edge computing cuts across the IoT – from home and work to the most complex of all, the vehicle. Coupled with the rising digitalization that leads to everything connected, high-performance edge compute platforms are transforming ecosystems and the development landscape. In this talk, Maarten Dirkzwager will share why mastering edge computing with the right level of safety and security is critical to enabling next-generation technologies.

Maarten Dirkzwager NXP

Maarten Dirkzwager is responsible for corporate strategy and chief of staff to the NXP management team. He joined the company in 1996 at Philips. After several roles in central engineering, he moved to Philips Semiconductors in Hong Kong in 2005, where he was responsible for the innovation, efficiency and strategy of the discrete back-end factories. In 2009, he moved to the corporate strategy team in the Netherlands where he was involved in the transition of NXP to a profitable high-performance mixed-signal player. In 2015, he played a leading role in NXP’s acquisition and integration of Freescale, which resulted in creating one of the leading semiconductor companies and a leader in automotive semiconductors. In 2017 and 2018, he worked as head of strategy for ASML and AMS, after which he returned to NXP in early 2019.