VLSI CAD Research Competitions
Hi Medium Readers,
This article of mine will highlight some of the most coveted VLSI-CAD Research Competitions. It’s an attempt to spread awareness among Indian students and semiconductor professionals. I’m mostly interested in the Physical Design and CAD side of VLSI. Hence, I’ll be covering them.
I have worked for QCOM’s GPU’s. The BDC team seems to much ahead than the San-Diego team in terms of execution. The team members were at-least 10 years experienced in SoC design. I was the youngest member in the team. The pressure was very high and I couldn't survive. I somehow have a feeling that even to work on a small block in QCOM-BDC GPU, you should have at-least 4–5 years of experience.
Some context → Professionals working in the VLSI domain belong to one of the following categories.
- CAD-Tool Research.
- CAD-Tool Usage.
- CAD-Tool Support.
I’ll list some of the conferences that Semiconductor professionals attend. (These are some of the conferences that I am aware of. There are many actually.)
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Tool User Conferences (Unpaid)→
- SNUG (Synopsys User Group) Conference.
SNUG- Silicon Valley →
SNUG India →
2. CDN Live (Cadence User Conference).
CDN- Americas→
CDN- India→
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VLSI-CAD Research Conferences/Competitions (Paid)
- International Conference on VLSI Design.
This happens in India round the year. I happened to participate in one of the tutorial proceedings. Oh Boy, the quality is off the charts. This particular conference has a very high rejection ratio. Only the best of the best papers are given a chance to present. The best of the best industry leaders/Universities present their research work here.
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The conferences that are listed from now on are of very high quality. Most of them are conducted in the US.
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2. ICCAD (International Conference on Computer Aided Design).
The competition (CAD-Contest) is much more intense than the conference. The problem statements are released about 5–6 months prior to the competition. The participants are mostly post grad & doctoral students. The beauty of this competition is that you ought to know about VLSI-PD and advanced Computer Science to solve problems given in the contest. Funnily, no one from India has made it to the finals. In-fact many of the semiconductor professionals in India are not even aware of this competition. (However, there are a few exceptions. Somehow, TI-India has been the R&D hub of India.) My manager’s manager was from TI. He not only knew about this, but also published papers in these coveted conferences. He in-fact owns a patent for one of his algorithms.
3. DAC (Design Automation Conference)
Another conference of very high quality. It’s very hard to crack these competitions. If you look at the link above, the “hack” winners are university students from the US and some of the working professionals are competing with them. The results speak for themselves.
4. ISPD (International Symposium on Physical Design)
This is one another event that focuses solely on Physical Design and CAD related to Physical Design. The competition format is on similar lines with the IC-CAD contest.
Contest Link →
5. ASP-DAC (Asia South Pacific — Design Automation Conference)
I am not sure if they have a contest but this is one of the conferences of the highest quality in the APAC region.
6. DATE (Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference)
This is mostly the Europe equivalent of ICCAD.
7. Tau Contest (Timing Contest)
This contest is one of my favourites. Timing in Physical Design is one of the most important steps in closure of a SoC. The idea is to write/code a “Timing Calculator” for various models of libs. (NLDM/CCS etc).
8. ICCD (International Conference on Computer Design)
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IEEE groups associated with EDA research
- ACM-SIGDA — (Special Interest Group in Design Automation)
2. IEEE-CEDA — (Council on Electronic Design Automation)
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Some of the influential personalities (read “Pioneers/Rockstars”)in Physical Design EDA are →
0. Alberto L. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli — (Founder — Synopsys & Cadence)
Let’s just say he is the guy solely responsible for what the VLSI Industry it is now.
- Andrew B Kahng —
His Research Group —
2. Sachin Sapatnekar —
His Research Group —
3. Igor Markov— (former student of AB Kahng)
His Research Group —
My answer may not be perfect. But, anyone reading this article will get a fair idea of some of the contests/conferences/research-groups.
An extremely detailed article about the CAD-Research Groups in the US can be found here →
I might have missed some. I’ll update when I get to know more.
Edit →
The Taiwanese are rocking the world of Physical Design EDA and Semiconductor Research in general. Here are some of the top researchers from Taiwan→
- Yao-Wen Chang
2. Iris Hui-Ru Jiang
3. Tsung-Yi Ho
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-Sethupathi Balakrishnan.