Introduction to the 34th Annual IEEE Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuit Symposium

This special issue of the IEEE JOURNAL Journal of Solid-State Circuits covers the 2012 Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuit (CSIC) Symposium held in La Jolla, CA, USA during October 14-17, 2012. For nearly 35 years, the CSIC Symposium (formerly known as the GaAs IC Symposium) has been the preeminent conference for presenting the latest advances in high-speed, high-performance, integrated circuits and systems with primary focus on compound semiconductor technologies such as those based on GaAs, InP, GaN, SiGe, advanced silicon, and 2D crystal, as well as hybrid and heterogeneously integrated technologies. The 2012 conference featured 63 technical papers (including 19 invited papers), one primer course on "Basics of Compound Semiconductor ICs," two short courses on "The Future of Semiconductor Devices and Integrated Circuits" and "Advanced Thermal Management for Wide Bandgap (WBBG) Devices and Circuits," and two panel sessions on "Circuit Design with FEM EM Simulators - Does an IC Designer Really Need Arbitrary 3D EM Analysis" and "Is Diamond the Answer to High Power Density GaN?" An overview of the technical articles presented in this issue is given.