I thought that last year’s IMS2011 was the year of GaN, but I was definitely wrong.  This year there was even more emphasis on GaN including several companies adding GaN products to their portfolio, most notably Freescale (which has traditional been the biggest proponent of LDMOS).  Another notable trend was better modeling and testing capabilities in addition to tunable technologies which finally seem to be good enough to be designed into major applications.  Examples include Peregrine’s tunable capacitors and WiSpry’s tunable MEMS devices.

The Montreal venue was pretty well laid out with all the sessions right above the exhibition center.  The exhibition traffic was expected to be low and was for some, but others reported that it was pretty good quality so they were satisfied.  Next year IMS2013 is in Seattle which will be difficult for significant local attendance but should be an average year.

The technical conference was very strong this year with a record number of papers submitted including a significant increase in international participation.    The number of exhibiting companies was also very high with many new companies participating for the first time.  Again, there was a stronger international participation than in the past.  Ke Wu, as General Chair, did a great job, and we have a video interview that will be online next week.  We also had a couple of interviews with executives and many product demos that were videotaped for those who could not attend or did not catch some of these products being displayed on the floor.

Microwave Journal had more than 125 people attend the GaN Market Opportunities special panel session sponsored by Strategy Analytics with many of the leading experts presenting their views on the subject followed by a question and answer session.  Microwave Journal also organized the special MicroApps session on Device Characterization and Modeling which was webcast live to an audience of more than 100 people.  As these special sessions prove to be popular, we will be doing more of them in the future as we look forward to our Defense and Security Forum at EuMW in Oct.

We will be posting the videos, show wrap up and photos next week (don't worry, I will not publish any compromising photos from the party).  As usual, good parties and good people so it was great to see everyone.  Let me know what you thought of IMS2012 and any interesting experiences you had in Montreal!