The 72nd edition of the annual IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) is scheduled for December 12-16, 2026, in the Hilton San Francisco Union Square Hotel (see image above). This year’s theme, “Devices at the Heart of the Intelligence Revolution,” highlights the semiconductor devices and microelectronic technologies making strong growth of artificial intelligence (AI) possible.

The technical program will include 280 presentations as well as Focus Sessions (including several on quantum computing), tutorials, short sources, and a supplier exhibition. 

Pointing out how semiconductor devices and microelectronic technologies are being applied to AI, 2026 IEDM Publicity Chair, John Paul Strachan (Director of Peter Grünberg Institute, Forschungszentrum Jülich, and Professor at RWTH Aachen University, Germany), said, “We are seeing again many efforts across industry and research teams to especially address the unique challenges posed by AI. This spans memory performance and density, including 3D developments, logic technology, and more emerging approaches with 2D materials and in-memory computing.”

Strachan added, “System-level integration is also front and center. While these traditional computing paradigms continue to progress, IEDM also has its eyes on future technologies such as quantum computing.”

Sandy Liao, IEDM 2026 Publicity Co-Chair and Director at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC), explained, “The defining trend of the year is that technological breakthroughs are no longer limited to individual devices or isolated fields.”

Regarding progress in semiconductors and microelectronics, Liao said, “Progress increasingly depends on co-optimizing materials, transistor architectures, memory, interconnects, and packaging as an integrated system. The breadth of work at IEDM 2026 shows how the semiconductor community is redefining scaling for the intelligent-computing era.”