In mid-November, 2019 I once again got a bird's eye view of Boston's Logan airport as I headed for SEMICON Europa in Munich, Germany. The main purpose of the trip was attending SEMICON Europa, a major semiconductor industry trade show. As part of the show, I organized and chaired the "Smart Design" session, including talks and a panel session on current chip design issues. After the close of the show, the SEMI staff in attendance at the show got together for a post-show dinner.
After the close of the show early Friday afternoon, a friend and I went to the BMW Museum. They had an interesting exhibit of historical and concept BMW vehicles and engines. I didn't take many photos, but here are a few.
Another German friend joined me in Munich for the weekend to do a little sightseeing. She's a big fan of zoos, so we went to Tierpark Hellabrunn (Munich Zoo) on Saturday. It was a bit chilly and cloudy, but it wasn't raining (or snowing). We both took quite a few photos, and some video. The zoo has quite a few species that were either near extinction, or were extinct but through cross breeding have been restored.
- European Elk.
- Giraffes.
- Tarpan. These wild horses became extinct in the 19th century. The tarpans here are bred-back from other horses, producing a look-alike .
- Auroch. First domesticated around 6500 years ago in the middle east, the auroch is the ancestor of many of today’s domestic cattle species. This is actually called a bred-back auroch, since the original species is extinct. These were bred back in the 1930s by selectively breeding domestic cattle.
- Wolf.
- Vicuña. The smallest member of the camel family.
- Bison.
- Elephant.
- Red River Hog.This hog was very interested in the sound of the camera. Each time I took a shot, it raised it’s head a litle more, looking directly at the camera. Thanks for posing!
- Tiger.
- Persian Fallow Deer.
- Polar bear. (Check out the video!)
The polar bear was very busy pulling apart a plastic barrel stuck on a tree branch near the stream in it's habitat. (48 second video.)
We also visited the aquarium, including an electric eel, shark tank, and piranhas. The parrots in one of the bird houses were happily munching on apples.
We decided on an indoor activity on Sunday, so we went to the Deutsches Museum. We visited a few of the technology exhibits (there were too many to see all in one day). One of the most popular exhibits is the high-voltage demonstration. Other energy related exhibits (among many) included the steam powered portable generator and a scale model of a windmill, showing the inside structure.
Of course, we had to visit the computing and semiconductor exhibits. It brought back lots of memories (no pun intended).
- I had to include a slide rule, the first computing device I used in college.
- An early non-volatile memory, made from small magnetic cores. I still have one of these in my collection. It's 4k bits, or 512bytes.
- An early home computer, the Sinclair ZX81, ca. 1981. I still have one of these as well, purchased when they first came out in 1981!
- Some old-timers might remember saving and transporting files on a tape drive.
- Next is a plot of the layout of a chip using a standard cell layout methodology.
- Last is a stack of diffusion furnaces, used in the manufacture of the chips.
