Challenges in physical chip design

On behalf of the ICCAD-2000 Executive and Technical Program Committees, I would like to welcome you tothe International Conference on Computer-Aided Design, which will take place between November 5-9 at theSan Jose DoubleTree Hotel. The technical program for ICCAD-2000 was assembled by a program committee which inclcdes experts from industry and academia around the world. The committee was organized and directed by Rolf Ernst. Its members devoted several days to reviewing the papers, and then participated in the full-day meeting to select papers from the many excellent submissions. Each paper was reviewed by at least 5 experts in the field. 86 papers were accepted from 265 papers submitted. A new part of the technical program this year is the IEEE/GAS William J. McCalla ICCAD Best Paper Award. This award is given in memory of William McCalla, for his contributions to ICCAD and his CAD technical work throughout his career. The award will be given to the authors of a best paper selected through a rigorous and multi-stage review process. It will be given during the opening session on Monday morning, November 6. Also new this year is the keynote address, which will be given by William J. Dally and is entitled "Lets Get Physical: ASICXOC Design in the Era of Wire-Limited Technology". This year we have increased the number of 90-minute tutorials to seven, as they have been a highly appreciated part of the technical program. The tutorials will cover the topics of communications systems, challenges in physical design, incremental CAD, verification, testing future systems-on-a-chip, low-power processors, and manufacturability. On Tuesday afternoon, there will be a technical panel organized by Lawrence Pileggi. The panel will be led by Richard Newton, entitled "Why Doesn't EDA Get Enough Respect", and the members will discuss the status of the CAD domain within the larger technology and businessworlds. Complementing the technical program is the 2000 tutorial program, on November 9th, organized by Andreas Kuehlmann. This year's tutorials include the following topics: 1) Algorithms for physical design, 2) Interconnect design and analysis for electrical integrity? 3) Principles and advanced techniques for symbolic model checking, and 4) Gain-based logic synthesis. The first three tutorials address the corner areas of a modern integrated synthesis flow, covering logic synthesis, layout design, and signal integrity analysis. The fourth tutorial presents recent advances in verification algorithms basecl on model checking. The rapid pace of advance at both ends - deep submicron and mixed signal technology at the physical end as well as systems-on-a-chip and platform-based design at t.he systems end-continues to make CAD research and tool development an exciting domain. ICCAD-2000 offers a place For CAD researchers, CAD developers, and VLSI designers to meet and exchange ideas about the problems and solutions for next-generation electronic systems