If the Research Track is the soul of the Design Automation Conference, the Designer Track is its beating heart. And as we’ve seen in recent years, that heart beat is only getting stronger.

I’m so excited to be the co-chair for the Designer Track for the 56^th DAC because it’s really where the rubber meets the road for systems designers, where deep and fruitful conversations happen between presenters and audience members and where the near-term future of design is laid out completely.

This year – my first as Designer Track co-chair – I’m honored to be working with Renu Mehra from Synopsys and Ambar Sarkar from NVIDIA. Renu is overseeing the back-end design topics, such as design flow and verification, while Ambar is looking after the front-end: architecture, design and verification. For my part, I’m responsible for the embedded system and software aspect of the Designer Track.

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Research is the very heart and soul of the Design Automation Conference (DAC). In fact, one could easily argue that our industry as we know it today would not exist if not for the fundamental research that has been published at DAC for over five decades, as well as many of its sister conferences (e.g., DATE, ICCAD, etc.).

This year I am honored to have been selected to serve as the 56th DAC Technical Program Committee (TPC) chair for the Research Track. And I am excited to announce that we are off to a great start assembling over two hundred respected researchers from both academia and industry to participate on this year’s TPC. The need for such a large TPC is driven by a recent increase in automation research to address growing design complexity and is reflected in the figure below. The graph shows that in 2018, DAC approved a total of 692 submissions for review, of which 168 were accepted by the TPC, resulting in an acceptance rate of 24.3%.

Figure 1

What’s driving this increase in research? While DAC’s key research focus has traditionally been in pure EDA, which still accounts for the largest percentage of paper submissions (as shown in the figure below), DAC has evolved over the years to address emerging challenges ranging from chips to systems. This includes research in design (DES), security (SED), embedded systems (ESS), and autonomous systems (AUTO).

Figure 2

For example, the design topic area in the research track includes the design of cyber-physical systems, SoC architectures, machine learning and artificial intelligence architectures, emerging models of computation such as brain-inspired and quantum computing, digital and analog circuits, and emerging device technologies. Whereas the security topic area focuses on research to address an urgent need to create, analyze, evaluate, and implement embedded systems and software base of the contemporary security solutions. Finally, the Embedded and Autonomous Systems topic area offers cutting-edge research to address an increasingly diverse, disruptive, and challenging field for designs ranging from mobile devices, medical devices, automotive, robotics, drones, industrial, and beyond.

DAC is recognized as the premier conference for design and automation of electronic systems, and research is certainly an integral part of DAC. The call for contributions is now open, and we are off to a great start. Be sure to mark your calendars for June 2-6 at the Las Vegas Convention Center for what I am convinced will be one of the most exciting DAC years in terms of outstanding education, training, exhibits, and superb networking opportunities for both researchers and engineers.

I’ve been attending DAC since 1992, and it’s astonishing to me how each new year brings more and more compelling experiences for attendees. Of course DAC is rooted in a world-class IEEE and ACM sponsored conference program, but the activities in the exhibit hall just get more and more amazing and fun every June.

The exhibit hall at this year’s DAC is not just a place where exhibitors from around the world will share leading-edge technologies. It’s going to be a hive of all sorts of activities—a magnet for all attendees.

Here’s a rundown of what you’ll experience in Austin, June 18-22.

• In the second year of the popular World of IoT, we’ve added new interactive experiences for attendees to enjoy, building on last year’s successes. We have a tech puzzle for avid problem solvers, a new virtual reality experience and our very popular tear-downs . These activities are part of the popular DAC Attack game, available in the DAC mobile app. We give out prizes—Samsung VR headset, Bose noise canceling headphones, Amazon gift cards, and more— to the highest points winners on Wednesday at 5:00 p.m. from the DAC Pavilion. And don’t forget the return of the Makers Market and the IP Pavilion, all within the World of IoT. It’s almost like an entire event in and of itself!

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