Workshop & Contest Summaries

Workshops and contests, such as those at the International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD) and the Design Automation Conference (DAC), have become an important driving force in pushing the EDA domain forward in different areas.  To encourage better research development on timely and practical EDA problems across all domains, CEDA sponsors many community events such as workshops, panels, contests, and technology surveys.


2019


2018

Overview of 2018 CAD Contest at ICCAD

The CAD Contest at ICCAD is an annual international research and development competition, focusing on advanced, real-world problems in the industry. It has been co-sponsored by IEEE Council of Electronic Design Automation (CEDA), Ministry of Education (MOE), Taiwan, Synopsys, Inc., and Cadence Design Systems, Inc., since 2012, while the 2018 CAD Contest was additionally sponsored by ACM Special Interest Group on Design Automation (SIGDA). Every year, the contest attracts about a hundred teams from all over the world, fosters research advancement of electronic design automation (EDA), and results in many submissions and new publications in top-tier conferences and journals. The contest keeps enhancing its impact and boosts EDA research.

The 2018 CAD Contest was co-organize by Prof. Mark Po-Hung Lin from National Chung Cheng University, Prof. Shigetoshi Nakatake from the University of Kitakyushu, Prof. Ulf Schlichtmann from Technical University of Munich, and Prof. Ing-Chao Lin from National Cheng Kung University. Three challenging EDA problems were announced in early February. The number of registrations by the end of May hit record high, 136 teams from 11 countries/regions, including Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Mainland China, Malaysia, Russia, Taiwan, and USA. About one third of the teams successfully submitted their final compiled programs for evaluations in early September. The winners of each problem were presented and awarded at ICCAD’18 in San Diego, CA, on Monday, November 5, 2018.

The topic, topic chairs, and winners of each problems are listed below.

Problem A — Smart EC: Program-Building for Name Mapping, which was chaired by Chi-An (Rocky) Wu, Ching-Yi Huang, and Chih-Jen (Jacky) Hsu from Cadence Design Systems, Inc. The winners are Chia-Chun Lin, Ya-Chun Chang, Yi-Ting Lin, Xiang-Min Yang, Yan-Ping Chang, and Prof. Chun-Yao Wang from National Tsing Hua University (1st Place), Li-Cheng Zheng, Fu-Lian Weng, Chung-Wei Huang, Jui-Hsuan Lee, and Prof. Yung-Chih Chen from Yuan Ze University (2nd Place), and Chen-Hao Hsu, Shao-Chun Hung, Hao Chen, Fan-Keng Sun, and Prof. Yao-Wen Chang from National Taiwan University (3rd Place).

Problem B — Obstacle-Aware On-Track Bus Routing, which was chaired by About Liao, Hua-Yu Chang, Owen Chi, and Jane Wang from Synopsys, Inc. The winners are Jingsong Chen, Gengjie Chen, Jinwei Liu, Dan Zheng, and Prof. Evangeline F.Y. Young from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (1st Place), Yi-Hao Cheng, Tao-Chun Yu, and Prof. Shao-Yun Fang from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (2nd Place), and He-Teng Zhang and Prof. Yao-Wen Chang from National Taiwan University and Prof. Masahiro Fujita from University of Tokyo (3rd Place).

Problem C — Timing-Aware Fill Insertion, which was chaired by Bo Yang and Sriraaman Sridharan from Synopsys, Inc. The winners are Xingquan Li, Zhipeng Huang, Ziran Zhu, Ye Huang, Tingshen Lan, Prof. Jianli Chen, Prof. Wenxing Zhu, and Prof. Genghua Fan from Fuzhou University (1st Place), Bentian Jiang, Ran Chen, Wei Li, Xiaopeng Zhang, Prof. Evangeline F.Y. Young, and Prof. Bei Yu from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2nd Place), and Kai-Chuan Yang, Yun-Jhe Jiang, Jia-Hong Chang, and Prof. Shao-Yun Fang from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (3rd Place).

The 2019 CAD Contest at ICCAD will call for participation in late January. Please pay attention to the official contest website: http://iccad-contest.org/.


Previous Years


CAD Contest


The 2017 CAD Contest at ICCAD is a challenging, multi-month, research and development competition, focusing on advanced, real-world problems in the field of Electronic Design Automation. The contest is open to multi-person teams worldwide. Contestants can participate in one or more problems in the three areas of logic synthesis, global routing, and placement legalization. For more information, including registration details, detailed problem descriptions, and contest rules, please refer to the official contest website.

Since its inaugural year of 2012, the CAD Contest at ICCAD has been a worldwide competition, conducted with joint sponsorship from IEEE CEDA and the Ministry of Education (MOE), Taiwan. Over the years, the contest has presented challenging problems and real-world benchmarks in varied topic areas while fostering productive industry-academia collaboration. In the past four years, the contest has witnessed a progressive increase in worldwide participation: 56 teams from 7 regions in 2012, 87 teams from 9 regions in 2013, 93 teams from 9 regions in 2014, 112 teams from 12 regions in 2015, and 135 teams from 11 regions in 2016. Each year winners are awarded at an ICCAD special session dedicated to this contest. Thus far, it has led to more than 95 publications in top-tier conferences and journals, which have undoubtedly boosted EDA research and extended the impact of the contest.

Contest Problem

Problem A: Resource-aware Patch Generation
Problem B: Net Open Location Finder with Obstacles
Problem C: Multi-Deck Standard Cell Legalization

Tentative Contest Schedule

1. Call for participation: February 01, 2017
2. Official website open: February 06, 2017
3. Problem description announcement: February 06, 2017
4. Registration deadline: May 03, 2017
5. Alpha test submission: June 07, 2017
6. Beta test submission: July 26, 2017
7. Submission deadline: August 31, 2017
8. Award ceremony: November 2017 (at ICCAD)

Other Information

1. For all inquiries, please send an email to [email protected]
Please add "ICCAD2017_Contest" to the subject line for any emails regarding the contest.
2. All updates will be announced on the official contest website:http://cad-contest-2017.el.cycu.edu.tw/CAD-contest-at-ICCAD2017/index.html
3. Archived website for the 2016 CAD contest at ICCAD: http://cad-contest-2016.el.cycu.edu.tw/

Organization

1. Contest chair: 
Myung-Chul Kim (IBM Corp., USA)

2. Contest co-chairs:
Shih-Hsu Huang (Chung Yuan Christian University, Taiwan)
Rung-Bin Lin (Yuan Ze University, Taiwan)
Shigetoshi Nakatake (The University of Kitakyushu, Japan)

3. Topic chairs:
Ching-Yi Huang, Chi-An (Rocky) Wu and Chih-Jen (Jacky) Hsu (Cadence Design Systems Inc., Taiwan)
Cindy Shen and Kai-Shun Hu (Synopsys Taiwan Co., Ltd., Taiwan)
Ismail Bustany (Mentor Graphics), Nima Karimpour Darav (University of Calgary) and Andrew Kennings (University of Waterloo)

Sponsors

IEEE CEDA
Ministry of Education, Taiwan
Taiwan IC Design Society
Synopsys, Inc.
Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
National Chip Implementation Center, Taiwan


EDAthon 2017

Sponsored by IEEE CEDA, Organized by IEEE CEDA Hong Kong Chapter

The exciting EDAthon 2017 contest, organized by CEDA HK Chapter, was held on July 28 of 2017 with the participation of 10 teams from Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. During the one-day competition, all the participants displayed impressive EDA skills and the following three teams were awarded for their outstanding performance.

Event Website

Design Automation Futures Workshop (DAFW2016)

During Oct 2016, CEDA sponsored its first Design Automation Futures Workshop.  The goal was to bring prominent researchers in EDA to determine research directions in the area of neuromorphic computing.  Many experts from around the world presented designs/ideas/architectures developed for efficient/native execution of neural networks and cognitive algorithms. New devices such as memristors, RRAM and VRRRAM were also discussed.  Approximately 45 people attended the workshop. The presentations in each session were followed by panel discussions. The presentations and panel discussions were videotaped and are now available for viewing.  All slides can be viewed by accessing our Google folder here or by simply clicking the appropriate link in our shared Google Doc. This Google Doc contains the agenda with links to the presentations and videos.


IEEE Texas Workshop on Integrated Systems Exploration (TexasWISE 2015)

Sponsored by CEDA and IEEE CAS Society
See as well the Call for Posters and the Call for Participation


ICCAD 2015 CAD Contest (Taiwan)  

The 2015 CAD contest at ICCAD is a challenging, multi-month, research and development competition, focusing on advanced, real-world problems in the field of Electronic Design Automation. The contest is open to multi-person teams worldwide. Contestants can participate in one or more problems in the three areas of system level design, logic synthesis & verification, and physical design. For more information, including registration details, detailed problem descriptions, and contest rules please refer to the official contest website.  

The CAD contest at ICCAD has been jointly sponsored by IEEE CEDA and Ministry of Education (MOE), Taiwan, since 2012 with the goal of fostering a close working relationship between members of the academia and the industry to advance the state-of-the-art in EDA. In the past three years, it has attracted 56 teams from 7 worldwide regions, 87 teams from 9 regions, and 93 teams from 9 regions. Prior to its internationalization, it was solely sponsored by MOE, Taiwan for 12 consecutive years, tremendously boosting EDA research in Taiwan. Each year winners are felicitated at an ICCAD special session dedicated to this contest. The contest has also lead to numerous publications in top-tier conferences and journals showcasing the research from the top-performing teams.

Report  


IEEE ICCAD 2014 TCAD to EDA Workshop

presentation slides


IEEE Texas Workshop on Integrated Systems Exploration (TexasWISE 2014)

Sponsored by CEDA and IEEE CAS Society 


SISPAD (Simulation of Semiconductor Processes & Devices) Workshop


CEDA organized a workshop titled "Linking Technology and Electronic System CAD" at SISPAD 2013. 

Videos