Many of today’s startling advances in computing technology are direct consequences of Moore’s law related growth in transistor count, computational performance, and network bandwidth. Although technologists provide an increasing number of components on chip with each passing generation, it is the chip designers and computer architects who use this technology and drive the Moore’s law curve. Microprocessor performance has doubled every 18 months for several decades, leading to a vast array of interesting applications. Over its 13-year history, the Hot Chips conference has become a leading forum for the latest computing, communications, and networking chips. The conference covers technical details of these chips across the board, including technology, fundamental algorithms, packaging techniques, architecture, and circuit details. The emphasis is on real chips and applications; not theoretical research or marketing hype. The 2001 Hot Chips 13 program consisted of 25 wonderful presentations selected from a set of high-quality submissions. This year saw a continued trend away from traditional high-performance computing toward embedded applications, networking, infrastructure chips, and even micromagnetic storage devices. This issue of IEEE Micro brings you the best of these presentations expanded to full articles.