The CEDA Distinguished Speaker Series continues with a presentation on Digital Analog Design from Mark Horowitz, chairman of Stanford University’s Electrical Engineering Department, that will be held during this year’s Design Automation Conference (DAC).

In his lunchtime talk, scheduled for Tuesday, June 5, from 11:45 a.m.-1:30 p.m. in Room #303 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Professor Horowitz will outline how analog tools can be more like digital design tools. It is open to all DAC attendees on a first-come, first-served basis.

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Author: David Yeh
Director, Integrated Circuit and Systems Sciences
Semiconductor Research Corporation
Chair of the CEDA Awards Committee

Our EDA industry is made of many talented and creative individuals, many of whom are members of IEEE and participate in CEDA’s activities. I hope you’ll be able to join us as we honor some of them with achievement awards during the opening session of DAC Tuesday, June 5, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. We will also recognize three members of our community who are newly appointed Fellows of the IEEE.

The awards are the Donald O. Pederson for the best paper of IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design, the A. Richard Newton Technical Impact, the Outstanding Service Contribution and the Phil Kaufman.

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My blog today is about nominations that are open for two prestigious awards. The first is the Early Career Award given by CEDA. The second is the Phil Kaufman Award for Distinguished Contributions to EDA, jointly sponsored by CEDA and the EDA Consortium. Both are presented annually.

The Early Career Award honors an individual who has made innovative and substantial technical contributions to EDA in the early stages of his or her career.

Full members of the IEEE at any level –– regular, senior, or fellow grades –– whose highest educational degree has been awarded no more than eight years prior to the date of the nomination deadline are eligible. The award is based on contributions measured by technical merit and creativity in performing research, and will be assessed based on the published record of the individual and references accompanying the nomination.

The award is intended to be equally available to contributors from academic and industrial institutions. Some of the specific criteria used will be the current and potential impact of the individual’s contributions, as well as contributions to the profession at large. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s still time to submit a nomination for the A. Richard Newton Technical Impact Award in Electronic Design Automation. The nomination, open through Wednesday, February 1, can be made by anyone who is familiar with the individual’s or group’s published work.

This yearly award for outstanding technical contributions honors the late Dr. Richard Newton, a luminary in design automation academia and industry, and dean of engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, who died in 2007. CEDA sponsors the award, along with the ACM Special Interest Group in Design Automation (ACM SIGDA). It can be given to an individual from either the industrial/commercial side of the business or academia.

The award will be presented to an individual or individuals for their outstanding technical contributions to electronic design automation (EDA), recognized over a significant period of time. Qualifications will be based on a high-impact, seminal paper published at least 10 years before the presentation of the award at this year’s Design Automation Conference. The paper must have passed through a peer-review process before publication and be an archived conference or journal publication available from or published by either ACM or IEEE. It should be a seminal paper where an original idea was first described. Follow-up papers and extended descriptions of the work may be cited in the nomination, but the award will be given for the initial original contribution.

For more details, visit: www.c-eda.org/newton.html.

At CEDA, we are justifiably proud these days because six candidates from the Council have been appointed Fellow of the IEEE effective January 1, 2012.

Those elevated to the Class of 2012 IEEE Fellow from CEDA are: Naehyuck Chang from Seoul National University for contributions to system-level power characterization, including thermal management; Chong-Nuen Chu of Iowa State University for contributions to physical design of integrated circuits; and Alper Demir at Koc University in Turkey for contributions to stochastic modeling and phase noise analysis.

We also congratulate: Rudy Lauwereins from IMEC for contributions to data flow models in real-time prototyping; Luis Silveira from the Technical University of Lisbon for contributions to analysis and modeling of VLSI interconnects; and Stephen Trimberger of Xilinx, Inc. for contributions to circuits, architectures and software technology for field-programmable gate arrays.

As many of you know, the IEEE Fellow is conferred by the IEEE board of directors and is a distinction reserved for select IEEE members who have made extraordinary accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields. It is the highest grade of membership and is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement.

Our six candidates have made enormous and varied contributions to the advancement of design automation. Their achievements have had profound effects on our community, so I’m sure you join us in a hearty thank you for their work. Please be sure to congratulate them when you see them at upcoming industry events.

A packed room of ICCAD attendees was treated to a presentation by Chris Malachowsky, NVIDIA Fellow and Senior Vice President of Research, on “Watts Next …” last month.
He lived up to his promise and explained in detail why it is essential to make the most economical and efficient use of power. He illustrated why power efficiency applies across NVIDIA’s broad range of processor offerings from supercomputers to cell phones.

For those of you who didn’t get to Chris’ talk, it’s now available in video and can be viewed here: http://dr-assoc.net/ICCAD-110811/ICCAD-110811.html. It’s missing the video that Chris showed during the talk, but we’re working to insert them.

For more information on CEDA, visit us at: www.c-eda.org.

When Professor Donatella Sciuto from Politecnico di Milano in Italy assumes the two-year term as CEDA president in January, she will begin implementing goals that include better coordination with IEEE design automation activities and encouraging greater participation from the EDA community. 

Helping her meet these goals will be a new slate of officers, two of whom are assuming new positions responsible for working more closely with CEDA’s six IEEE sponsoring societies, four technical committees and the growing number of CEDA chapters. 

The six sponsoring IEEE societies are Antennas and Propagation; Circuits and Systems; Computer; Electron Devices; Microwave Theory and Techniques; and Solid State Circuits.  Its four technical committees include the Computer-Aided Network DEsign (CANDE), Design and Test, Design Technology Council and the Test Technology Technical Council.  CEDA Chapters have been formed in Belgium, Brazil, Taiwan, Tunisia, with chapters being formed in China and Texas.

The new positions will be filled by William Joyner, director of Computer-Aided Design and Test at Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), who will become vice president of strategy.  Professor Rajesh Gupta of the University of California at San Diego will assume the role of vice president of publicity.

Andreas Kuehlmann, senior vice president of R&D at Coverity, who has served as the CEDA president since January 2010, will become past president.  Other incoming officers include Sani Nassif, manager at IBM, who has been named president-elect, and Yao-Wen Chang, professor at the National Taiwan University, who will become secretary.  David Atienza, professor and director of the Embedded Systems Laboratory at EPFL, will serve as vice president of conferences.  Shishpal Rawat, Intel’s director of business enabling programs within the design technology solutions group, will fill the role of vice president of finance.

Elected to the position of Vice President of Publications is Professor Sachin Sapatnekar from the University of Minnesota, while Joel Phillips, research scientist at Cadence, will become vice president of activities. 

Also elected for 2012-13 term are seven standing committee chairs, including:

• Awards — David Yeh, SRC’s director of Integrated Circuit and Systems Sciences
• Conferences — David Atienza
• Constitution and Bylaws — Professor Bryan Ackland of Stevens Institute of Technology
• Finance — Shishpal Rawat
• Nominations — Andreas Kuehlmann
• Publications — Sachin Sapatnekar
• Activities — Joel Phillips

Each will serve for a two-year term that begins January 1, 2012, and ends December 31, 2013.

In a future blog post, Andreas Kuehlmann will formally introduce Donatella Scuito.

Chris Malachowsky, renowned NVIDIA fellow and senior vice president of research, will regale ICCAD attendees with a talk on “Watts Next …” during a noontime luncheon hosted by CEDA November 8 at the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose, Calif.

We’re delighted Chris accepted our invitation. He’s promised to explain why it is essential to make the most economical and efficient use of power. We’ll learn how power efficiency applies across NVIDIA’s broad range of processor offerings from supercomputers to cell phones.

As many of you know, Chris co-founded NVIDIA in 1993 and is currently responsible for NVIDIA’s research organization chartered with developing strategic technologies that will help drive the company’s future growth and success. He has been instrumental in managing, defining and driving NVIDIA’s core technologies as it has grown from a startup to the global leader in visual and parallel computing. As an executive at NVIDIA, his roles have been diverse, heading numerous functions, including IT, operations, and all facets of its product engineering.

Previously, Chris held engineering and technical leadership positions at HP and Sun Microsystems. He is a recognized authority on integrated-circuit design and methodology, and has authored close to 40 patents. Chris holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Florida and a Master of Science degree in Computer Science degree from Santa Clara University. Both schools have honored him with Distinguished Alumnus awards.

I look forward to seeing you at Chris’ talk. It is open to all full ICCAD conference and Tuesday conference-only registrants.

The ICCAD website can be found at: http://iccad.com/

Please join CEDA and the EDA Consortium for the Phil Kaufman Award Dinner honoring Dr. C. L. David Liu, the William Mong honorary chair professor of Computer Science and former president of the National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, Taiwan. The dinner will be held Tuesday, November 8, at the Double Tree Hotel in San Jose, Calif.

Dr. Liu, a well-respected figure in our industry, is a distinguished engineer and educator, as well as an astute business leader. His fundamental and seminal work transformed ad hoc EDA to algorithmic EDA. His contributions have been incorporated in various tools that have impacted numerous market segments. Many of Dr. Liu’s students, influenced by his passion for EDA, have made their own impressive marks in our field.

The annual Phil Kaufman Award honors individuals who have made an impact on the field of EDA and posthumously named for Phil Kaufman, an industry pioneer who turned innovative technologies into commercial businesses that have benefited electronic designers. Last year’s recipient, Pasquale (Pat) O. Pistilli, chairman of MP Associates of Louisville, Colo., pioneered the EDA industry and built DAC as its premiere showcase and networking platform.

For more details or to register to attend the award dinner, go to www.edac.org/events11/kaufman/index.jsp

To read more about Dr. Liu’s many accomplishments, check out the IEEE CEDA blog post found at www10.edacafe.com/blogs/ceda/

CEDA and the EDA Consortium will present Dr. C. L. David Liu, the William Mong honorary chair professor of Computer Science and former president of the National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, Taiwan, with this year’s Phil Kaufman Award for Distinguished Contributions to EDA. He will receive the award at a dinner ceremony November 8 at the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose, Calif.

Dr. C. L. David Liu will receive this year’s Phil Kaufman Award for Distinguished Contributions to EDA

As chair of the Kaufman Selection Committee and past president of CEDA, I’ve had the privilege of presiding over the selection of the yearly recipient. Dr. Liu is a respected figure who has done fundamental and seminal work in EDA and well deserving of the honor. He is a distinguished engineer and educator, and an astute business leader. His contributions have been incorporated in many commercial tools and have impacted numerous market segments. He was a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign from 1973-1998. After his return to Taiwan in 1998, he became president of National Tsing Hua University until 2002. Many of his students, influenced by his passion for EDA, have made their own impressive marks in our field.

Early in his career, Dr. Liu led the transformation from ad hoc EDA to algorithmic EDA. He was an early advocate for more rigorous design automation, reasoning that powerful, formal algorithmic techniques were essential to the effective solution of complex design automation problems. His technical contributions are at the foundation of numerous current EDA tools within several disciplines, including behavioral synthesis, logic synthesis and physical design.

His technical impact includes the first floorplanning algorithms and scheduling algorithms for hard real-time tasks. His research on floorplanning received DAC’s Best Paper Award in 1986 and has been widely regarded as seminal. Dr. Liu’s work on Rate Monotonic Scheduling (RMS) is a cornerstone of modern scheduling theory, applicable in the design of real-time operating systems. As of today, his 1973 paper on the subject has more than 7,000 citations.

Over the past 12 years, his contribution to Taiwan’s semiconductor industry has been broad and significant. He serves as chairman of the board of TrendForce, a market intelligence provider in the DRAM, LED, LCD and Solar Energy technical segments. He is a member of the board of Powerchip Semiconductor Corp., United Microelectronics Corp., MediaTek and Macronix International Co., Ltd. Additionally, he is a member of the board of Anpec Electronics Corporation, Andes Corporation, and Cadence Methodology Service Company.

If that isn’t enough, he has hosted for the last six years a weekly radio show on technology, natural science, social science, and literature in Taiwan. He has published three essay collections based on the presentations in the show. One of them is a 2011 winner of a prestigious book award in the category of popular science.

The Phil Kaufman Award honors individuals who have made an impact on the field of EDA and pays tribute to Phil Kaufman, the late industry pioneer who turned innovative technologies into commercial businesses that have benefited electronic designers. Last year’s recipient was Pasquale (Pat) O. Pistilli, chairman of MP Associates of Louisville, Colo., who pioneered the EDA industry and built DAC as its premiere showcase and networking platform.

To register to attend the 2011 award dinner, go to: http://www.edac.org/events11/kaufman/index.jsp.