Distinguished Members

SIGDA Distinguished ACM Members

Naehyuck ChangSeoul National University
Igor MarkovUniversity of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Diana MarculescuCarnegie Mellon University
R. Iris BaharBrown University
Robert A. WalkerKent State University
Nikil D. DuttUniversity of California, Irvine
Stephen TrimbergerXilinx, Inc.
Krishnendu ChakrabartyDuke University
Massoud PedramUniversity of Southern California

Bylaws

BYLAWS of the Special Interest Group on DESIGN AUTOMATION of the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc.

  • Adopted – 27 October 1979
  • Revised – 9 March 1994
  • Revised – 7 July 2004
  • Revised – 24 March 2005
  • Revised – 20 January 2009
  • Revised – 20 July 2020

Article 1. Name and Scope

  1. This organization is called the Special Interest Group on Design Automation (SIGDA) of the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc: (the “ACM”).
  2. The scope of SIGDA’s specialty is to enhance the utility of computers as engineering tools in the design, fabrication, and test of systems and structures.

Article 2. Purpose

  1. SIGDA is organized and operated exclusively for educational, scientific, and technical purposes in design automation.
  2. The purpose of SIGDA and its activities includes:
    1. Collecting and disseminating information in design automation through a newsletter and other publications;
    2. Organizing sessions at conferences of the ACM;
    3. Sponsoring conferences, symposia, and workshops;
    4. Organizing projects and working groups for education, research, and development;
    5. Serving as a source of technical information for the Council and subunits of the ACM; and
    6. Representing the opinions and expertise of the membership on matters of technical interest to SIGDA or ACM.

Article 3. Charter

SIGDA will exist until dissolved as provided in Bylaw 6 of the ACM.

Article 4. Officers

  1. SIGDA officers are the Chair and Chairs for Awards, Conferences, Technical Activities, Educational Activities, Communications, and Finance; one of the named Chairs will also be a Vice-Chair. The Past Chair is not an elected official and may fill one of the named Chair positions. The officers are elected for three-year terms beginning July 1 of 2009. No extension of terms shall be allowed.
  2. The Chair is the principal officer, being responsible for leading SIGDA and managing its activities. The duties of the Chair are:
    1. Calling and presiding at SIGDA Executive Committee and business meetings;
    2. Conducting all of SIGDA’s activities in accordance with the policies of the ACM; and
    3. Making all appointments as authorized herein.
  3. The duties of the Vice-Chair are:
    1. Assisting the Chair in leading and managing SIGDA; and
    2. Presiding at meetings when the Chair is absent.
  4. The duties of the Past Chair are:
    1. Filling one of the named chair positions below, or act as a member of the Advisory Board; and
    2. Chairing the Nominating Committee for SIGDA officer elections.
  5. The duties of the Communications Chair are:
    1. Maintaining the records and correspondence of SIGDA;
    2. Keeping and distributing the minutes and action items of business and Executive Committee meetings.
  6. The duties of the Finance Chair are:
    1. Managing SIGDA’s finances according to the Financial Accountability Policy of the ACM. This includes preparing the annual budget, monitoring disbursements for adherence to the annual budget, and preparing financial reports as required.
    2. Managing of the SIGDA Travel Grants program, if applicable.
  7. The duties of the Awards Chair are:
    1. Providing a single point of contact for all SIGDA sponsored awards;
    2. Coordinating the process of nominating ACM/SIGDA members for Fellow, Distinguished, and Senior grades.
  8. The duties of the Conference Chair are:
    1. Providing a single point of contact for all SIGDA sponsored, co-sponsored, in-coop events except events for which other SIGDA Advisory Board members have been specifically assigned;
    2. Coordinating the review and approval of all conference/symposia/workshop budgets.
  9. The duties of the Technical Activities Chair are:
    1. Providing a single point of contact for all SIGDA Technical Committees and other technical activities;
    2. Coordinating and reviewing SIGDA TC activities and other technical activities.
  10. The duties of the Educational Activities Chair are:
    1. Providing a single point of contact for all SIGDA educational activities;
    2. Coordinating and reviewing all SIGDA educational activities.

Article 5. The Executive Committee

  1. The Executive Committee comprises the officers.
  2. Specific duties of the Executive Committee include:
  3. Approval of bylaw amendments before submission to members;
  4. Approval of annual dues for SIGDA;
  5. Approval of the annual budget and review all expenditures in excess of 1% of the fiscal year’s opening Fund Balance on a quarterly basis;
  6. Approval of conferences, symposia, workshops or sessions sponsored, co-sponsored or held in cooperation with SIGDA; and
  7. All the major management policy decisions of SIGDA must be approved by the Executive Committee.
  1. A quorum is a majority of the members of the Executive Committee and approval requires a majority vote of those present. Approval by mail ballot requires a majority vote.
  2. Only a member of the Executive Committee can make a motion for a vote by the Executive Committee.
  3. All members of, or candidates for, the Executive Committee must be voting Members of ACM and of SIGDA.

Article 6. Vacancies and Appointments

  1. Should the Chair leave office before his term expires, the Vice-Chair will assume the duties of Chair. Should any other elected office (including Past Chair) become vacant, the Chair of the SIG Governing Board may, on nomination by the SIGDA Chair, and approval by majority vote of the Executive Committee, fill the vacancy. The Chair may fill vacancies in positions appointed by the Chair, according to the procedures for making the original appointments as provided herein.
  2. Should a vacancy be unfilled, either because of inadequacy of these bylaws or because of a dispute or for any other reason, the SIG Governing Board Chair may fill it.
  3. All appointments expire automatically when the Chair’s term of office expires.

Article 7. The Newsletter

  1. SIGDA will publish a newsletter at regular intervals as determined by the Executive Committee. The newsletter will be distributed to all members.
  2. The Chair will nominate an Editor of the Newsletter, to be approved by majority vote of the Executive Committee.

Article 8. The Advisory Board

  1. The Advisory Board includes the Executive Committee (officers). It also includes members-at-large who are nominated by the SIGDA Chair. The Chair normally nominates up to ten members-at-large to the Advisory Board for his or her term of office. Appointments to the Advisory Board must be approved by a majority vote of the Executive Committee.
  2. The purpose of the Advisory Board is to allow members outside the Executive Committee to participate in setting policy and direction for, and assist in the operation of, SIGDA. The Advisory Board members are typically the program managers or coordinators of SIGDA sponsored activities.
  3. The Advisory Board members are non-voting members of the SIGDA Board, and while the Advisory Board may participate in a vote, their votes are non-binding, and only the Executive Committee votes are binding.

Article 9. Membership, Dues, and Voting Privileges

  1. A person becomes a member only after enrolling and paying the required dues. The dues for SIGDA are determined by the SIGDA Executive Committee with the approval of the Chair of the SIG Governing Board.
  2. All members of SIGDA may vote in any ballot conducted by SIGDA. On any ballot, the votes cast by non-ACM members of SIGDA will, if necessary, be prorated downward so that their effective total cannot exceed 50% of the eligible votes.

Article 10. Reports and Records

The SIGDA Chair is responsible for filing reports about SIGDA as required by the SIG Board. These include:

  1. An annual report on the activities during the previous year;
  2. All reports required by the Financial Accountability Policy of the ACM; and
  3. Closing reports on conferences and symposia.

The membership records of SIGDA will be maintained by ACM headquarters.

Article 11. Elections

  1. The Chair shall appoint a nominating committee in the autumn of each election year. This committee will nominate at least two candidates for the position of the chair and at least six other candidates for the members-at-large, who consent to serve on the Executive Committee and fill one of the named Chair positions if elected. The person winning the most votes among those nominated for the chair will be elected to that position. The six (or seven, if Past Chair does not wish to fill a name Chair position) receiving the highest number of votes among members-at-large are elected to the Executive Committee. A report of the nominating committee must be presented to the SIGDA membership before an election can be held.
  2. All applicants for the chair should have significant service experience of at least 3 years in the design automation community and SIGDA, in particular. They should have served at least one term in the executive committee in roles other than the chair. Equivalent experience through service to SIGDA-approved sponsored conferences as deemed acceptable by the nominating committee is allowed.  
  3. A petition from at least ten voting members of SIGDA will place other consenting candidates on the ballot for any of the EC positions, subject to meeting the requirements of 11(b) for the chair position. Petitions must be received by the Past Chair no later than April 15 in the year of election or within one month after the nominating committee has announced the candidates selected by the committee, whichever is later.
  4. Elections must be announced by direct communication to the SIGDA Membership with sufficient time before the election such that the membership has an opportunity to petition to be placed on the ballot.
  5. The election will be conducted among eligible voters by ballot sent by the nominating committee or by ACM Headquarters, following the election procedures of the ACM. The SIG Board will resolve ties.
  6.  All named chairs, except those of the Chair, are to be decided by the new Executive Committee by ballot, from those elected as members-at-large. The new Executive Committee votes for each position: Vice-Chair, Finance, Communications, Conferences, Technical Activities, Educational Activities, and Awards. 

Article 12. Amendments

  1. These bylaws may be amended by a majority vote of the ACM Executive Committee, or by a vote of SIGDA’s members as provided below. With the approval of the SIGDA Executive Committee, and the Executive Committee of the ACM, 2/3 of all the members of the SIG Board may amend Article 1 of these bylaws without a referendum of the members.
  2. Amendments to these bylaws may be proposed by the SIGDA Executive Committee, the SIG Governing Board, or by a petition from 10 voting members of SIGDA. All proposed amendments must be approved, prior to being submitted for a vote of the membership, by the Chairperson of both the SIG Governing Board and the Constitution and Bylaws Committee of ACM after the Executive Director of ACM has provided his advice.
  3. The ballot on the proposed amendment(s) will be conducted among the eligible voters by ACM Headquarters following the procedures of the ACM for voting bylaw amendments, unless a different procedure has been approved by the SIG Board. The proposal is adopted only if at least 2/3 of the effective votes of returned ballots approve it, and only if at least 10% of the ballots are returned. The Secretary/Treasurer will send a clean copy of the amended bylaws to the Executive Director of ACM and to the Chair of the SIG Governing Board.

Article 13. Dissolution

Should SIGDA be dissolved, control of its assets will revert to the ACM.

Article 14. Meetings

SIGDA will conduct at least one business meeting each year, normally in conjunction with the annual Design Automation Conference. All meetings sponsored by SIGDA must be open to all members of the ACM. SIGDA may hold meetings only in places that are open to all classes of members of the ACM. The Executive Committee may meet in closed session during business meetings.

Article 15. Consistency

The Constitution, Bylaws, and policies of the ACM and of the SIG Governing Board take precedence over any conflicting provisions of these bylaws or internal policies of SIGDA.

Annual Reports

Officers

Executive Committee

Christian Pilato
Vice Chair and Conference Chair

Xun Jiao
Finance Chair

Ganapati Bhat
Technical Activity Chair

Siddharth Garg
Education Chair

Callie Hao
Communication Chair

Sri Parameswaran
Award Chair

Advisory Board Members Acting as Conference Representatives 

DACWanli Chang, Sharon Hu
ICCADto be updated
DATEChristian Pilato, Aida Todri-Sanial
ASPDACYu Wang
ESWEEKSudeep Pasricha

SIGDA Members in Charge of Programs 

TODAES EICJiang Hu
DA Summer Schoolto be updated
SIGDA E-NewsletterSandeep Chandran
CADathlonto be updated
DAC Ph.D. Forumto be updated
DATE Ph.D. ForumChristian Pilato
ASPDAC Ph.D. Forumto be updated
Student Research Competitionto be updated
University Research Demonstrationto be updated
DAC Early Career Workshopto be updated

Below information (industry advisory board, diversity committee, etc) are outdated and will be updated soon.

Industry Advisory Board

Ismail BustanyAMD
Vivek DeIntel
Rajiv JoshiIBM
Renu MehraSynopsys
Mark RenNvidia
Nat ViswanathanCadence
Luis Miguel SilveiraCEDA

SIGDA Diversity Committee

Evangeline Young — ChairCUHK
Iris BaharBrown Univ.
Laleh BehjatUniv. of Calgary
Patrick GroeneveldCadence
Iris JiangNational Taiwan Univ.
Sashi ObilisettySynopsys
Raewadee ParnmukhSiFive
Laura PozziUSI
Ricardo ReisUFRGS
Ulf SchlichtmannTUM
Xuan ZengFudan Univ.

ACM Staff Acting as Program Director(s) for SIGDA

Donna Cappo
Association for Computing Machinery
2 Penn Plaza, Suite 701
New York, NY, 10121
212-626-0614 (p)
212-302-5826 (f)
All general SIGDA activities, SIGDA program manager

Committee of Who’s Who in SIGDA

CommitteeAreaEmailWebpage
Bei-Yu (Chair)Asia and Oceaniabyu@cse.cuhk.edu.hkhttp://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/%7Ebyu/
Yi-Chung ChenAmericasychen@tnstate.eduhttps://yichungchen84.github.io/
Hussam AmrouchEurope and Africaamrouch@iti.uni-stuttgart.dehttps://www.iti.uni-stuttgart.de/en/institute/team/Amrouch/

Website and Social Media

Interested in becoming a Volunteer of SIGDA?

Please send an email to us indicating the particular role of interest, meanwhile attaching resume.

UDemo@DAC

UDDAC 2025: 35th ACM SIGDA / IEEE CEDA University Demonstration at Design Automation Conference

ACM SIGDA/IEEE CEDA University Demonstration (UD, previously University Booth) is an excellent opportunity for university researchers to showcase their results and to interact with participants at the Design Automation Conference (DAC). Presenters and attendees at DAC are especially encouraged to participate, but participation is open to all members of the university community. The demonstrations include new EDA tools, EDA tool applications, design projects, and instructional materials.

The University Demonstration will be held together with the Ph.D. Forum at DAC.

Date: June 22-25,  2025

Location: Moscone Center West, San Francisco

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Submission should be made online at the Submission Site. Please upload a single PDF file that has the following:

  1. Title of your demonstration
  2. List of authors with their affiliations
  3. An extended abstract of up to 2 pages, excluding figures and references
  4.  A YouTube link to a 5-minute online video teaser. If you are not able to upload it to YouTube, please include another link to your video teaser.
  5. You may optionally attach a supporting paper.

Submission deadline: May 31, 2025, 11:59 PM AOE

Submission sitehttps://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=uddac2025

Notification of Acceptance will be on Jun 5, 2025.

AWARD AND STUDENT SUPPORT INFORMATION

There will be three “University Demo Best Demonstration” awards and travel support for presenters up to $700 for each team to attend the University Demonstration event in person for the accepted submissions. 

The presenter will be provided full registration to this year’s DAC. 

The winners will be announced at the conference after the demonstration. The presenter will only be eligible for travel support if he/she does not receive any travel support from other events at DAC such as Ph.D. Forum or Young Fellowship.

First Place$1000
Second Place$750
Third Place$500

The teams whose submissions got accepted should do the following for UDDAC 2024.

1. The presenter’s name and title

2. In-person video demonstrations are mandatory and should include a brief title sequence identifying the name of the research group and university, the team members, and stating “University Demonstration at DAC 2024.” Otherwise, there is complete freedom in how a group wishes to present its work.

Organizing Committee

ChairSumitha George, North Dakota State University. e-mail
Co-chairNan Wu, George Washington University. e-mail
Vice ChairYi Sheng, University of South Florida. e-mail
Vice Co-ChairUmamaheswara Rao Tida, North Dakota State University. e-mail

SRF@ASPDAC

The Student Research Forum at the ASP-DAC is renovated from a traditional poster session hosted by ACM SIGDA for PhD students to present and discuss their dissertations with experts in the design automation community. Starting from 2015, the forum includes both PhD and MS students, offering great opportunity for the students to establish contacts for their future career. In addition, the forum helps the companies and academic institutes to get an overview of the latest research and discover the extraordinary candidates for their employment.

This Year’s Awards (2022)

Best Poster – Research
Intelligent Circuit Design and Implementation with Machine Learning in EDA
Zhiyao Xie, Duke University

Best Poster – Presentation
Algorithm-Hardware Co-design of Transformer on FPGA Devices
Xinyi Zhang, University of Pittsburgh 

Most Popular Poster
ASBP: Automatic Structured Bit-Pruning for RRAM-based NN Accelerator
Songyun Qu, Chinese Academy of Sciences


Call for Submission: SIGDA Student Research Forum at ASP-DAC 2021 (SRF@ASP-DAC 2021)

Considering ASP-DAC 2021 is going virtual due to COVID-19, SRF@ASP-DAC 2021 will be held as a virtual forum. The forum welcomes all students, professors and industrial professionals from the relevant research community. The student author of each accepted submission by the forum is required to have a registration to ASP-DAC 2021 at least at the full student rate. The forum will provide financial support equivalent to the full student rate for each accepted submission.

ELIGIBILITY

  • Students must be within 1 year (M.S.) or 2 years (Ph.D.) of dissertation completion or have completed their dissertation during the last 12 months.
  • Dissertation topic must be relevant to the ASP-DAC community.
  • Previous ASP-DAC forum presenters are not eligible.
  • Students who have presented previously at DAC/DATE PhD forums are eligible.
  • Only students with at least one published or accepted conference, symposium or journal “full” paper are eligible for awards.
  • Students must attend the forum virtually to present the poster in person without substitute presentations, or else please contact the SRF Chair in advance.

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
A two-page PDF abstract of the dissertation (in two-column format, using 10pt. fonts and single-spaced lines), including name, institution, adviser, contact information, estimated (or actual) graduation date, whether the work has been presented at DAC PhD Forum or DATE PhD Forum, as well as figures and bibliography (if applicable). The two-page limit on the abstract will be strictly enforced: any material beyond the second page will be ignored by the reviewers. Each accepted abstract has to prepare a poster and a short video presentation, and the student has to attend the forum virtually for real-time interactions.

To be considered for awards, a student must explicitly indicate, in the title of the two-page abstract, the venues for which the work was published or accepted, and a list of all papers authored or co-authored by the student should be included in the bibliography of the two-page abstract. The papers must be related to the dissertation topic. Those on topics unrelated to the dissertation abstract will not be considered.

Submission website: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aspdacsrf2021

IMPORTANT DATES
  Submission Deadline: November 30, 2020 (firm)
  Date of Acceptance Notification: December 14, 2020
  Poster and Short Video Submission Deadline: January 5, 2021
  Forum Date: January 19, 2021

CONTACT INFORMATION
For queries, please send an e-mail to Prof. Weichen Liu (liu [at] ntu.edu.sg). Please include “SRF@ASP-DAC 2021” in the subject of your email.

Organizers

Chair:
Weichen Liu, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Co-Chairs:
Lei Jiang, Indiana University Bloomington, US
Yaoyao Ye, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
Secretariat:
Jun Zhou, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Technical Committee:
Hiromitsu Awano, Kyoto University, Japan
Donkyu Baek, Chungbuk National University, Korea
Ateet Bhalla, Independent Technology Consultant, India
Yuan-Hao Chang, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Wanli Chang, University of York, UK
Xianzhang Chen, Chongqing University, China
Yi-Jung Chen, National Chi Nan University, Taiwan
Xiang Chen, George Mason University, US
Haibao Chen, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
Sudipta Chattopadhyay, Singapore Univ. of Technology and Design, Singapore
Hsiang-Yun Cheng, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Luan Huu Kinh Duong, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Shao-Yun Fang, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
Ann Gordon-Ross, University of Florida, US
Chien-Chung Ho, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan
Weiwen Jiang, University of Notre Dame, US
Yukihide Kohira, The University of Aizu, Japan
Hyung-Gyu Lee, Daegu University, Korea
Sicheng Li, Hewlett Packard Labs, US
Yongfu Li, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
Qingan Li, Wuhan University, China
Chun-Han Lin, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan
Ren-Shuo Liu, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan
Jaehyun Park, University of Ulsan, Korea
Muhammad Shafique, New York University Abu Dhabi, UAE
Liang Shi, East China Normal University, China
Donghwa Shin, Soongsil University, Korea
Masashi Tawada, Waseda University, Japan
Hoeseok Yang, Ajou University, Korea
Ming-Chang Yang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
Lei Yang, University of New Mexico, US
Bei Yu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
Qian Zhang, University of California, Los Angeles, US
ASP-DAC liaison:
Masashi Tawada, Waseda University, Japan
Yukio Mitsuyama, Kochi University of Technology, Japan

Sponsors

ACM SIGDA
Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
Synopsys, Inc.

SRC@ICCAD

ACM Student Research Competition at ICCAD 2021 (SRC@ICCAD’21)

Sponsored by Microsoft Research, the ACM Student Research Competition is an internationally recognized venue enabling undergraduate and graduate students who are ACM members to:

  • Experience the research world — for many undergraduates, this is a first!
  • Share research results and exchange ideas with other students, judges, and conference attendees
  • Rub shoulders with academic and industry luminaries
  • Understand the practical applications of their research
  • Perfect their communication skills
  • Receive prizes and gain recognition from ACM and the greater computing community.

This Year’s Results (2021)

Undergraduate category (8 participants in total):

1st place: Zizheng Guo, Peking University
Presentation Title: Accelerating Static Timing Analysis with Parallel and Heterogeneous Computing

2nd place: Cynthia Chen, California Institute of Technology
Presentation Title: Optimizing Quantum Circuit Synthesis for Permutations on Limited Connectivity Topologies

3rd place: Yu Qian, Zhejiang University
Presentation Title: Energy-Aware Designs of Ferroelectric Ternary Content Addressable Memory

Graduate category (22 participants in total):

1st place: Xiaofan Zhang, UIUC
Presentation Title: Bridge the Hardware-Software Gap: Exploring End-to-End Design Flows for Building Efficient AI Systems

2nd place: Sanmitra Banerjee, Duke University
Presentation Title: Optimizing Emerging AI Accelerators under Random Uncertainties

3rd place: Qi Sun, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Presentation Title: Fast and Efficient Deployment of Deep Learning Algorithms via Learning-based Methods


Submission

The ACM Special Interest Group on Design Automation (ACM SIGDA) is organizing such an event in conjunction with the International Conference on Computer Aided Design (ICCAD). Authors of accepted submissions will get ICCAD registration fee support from SIGDA. The event consists of several rounds, as described at http://src.acm.org/, where you can also find more details on student eligibility and timeline.

DEADLINE: September 28, 2021 (Extended)
Online Submission: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=srciccad2021

Details on abstract submission:
Research projects from all areas of design automation are encouraged. The author submitting the abstract must still be a student at the time the abstract is due. Each submission should be made on the EasyChair submission site. Please include the author’s name, affiliation, and email address; research advisor’s name; ACM student member number; category (undergraduate or graduate); research title; and an extended abstract (maximum 2 pages or 800 words) containing the following sections:

  • Problem and Motivation: This section should clearly state the problem being addressed and explain the reasons for seeking a solution to this problem.
  • Background and Related Work: This section should describe the specialized (but pertinent) background necessary to appreciate the work. Include references to the literature where appropriate, and briefly explain where your work departs from that done by others. Reference lists do not count towards the limit on the length of the abstract.
  • Approach and Uniqueness: This section should describe your approach in attacking the problem and should clearly state how your approach is novel.
  • Results and Contributions: This section should clearly show how the results of your work contribute to computer science and should explain the significance of those results. Include a separate paragraph (maximum of 100 words) for possible publication in the conference proceedings that serves as a succinct description of the project.
  • Single paper summaries (or just cut & paste versions of published papers) are inappropriate for the ACM SRC. Submissions should include at least one year worth of research contributions, but not subsuming an entire doctoral thesis load.

All accepted submissions will be invited to present their work to the community (and a jury) as part of the program for ICCAD 2021 (details on the presentations will follow after acceptance). Note that ICCAD will take place virtually (i.e., as an online event) from November 1 to November 5, 2021.

The ACM Student Research Competition allows both graduate and undergraduate students to discuss their research with student peers, as well as academic and industry researchers, in an informal setting, while enabling them to attend ICCAD and compete with other ACM SRC winners from other computing areas in the ACM Grand Finals.

Online Submission – EasyChair:
https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=srciccad2021
Important dates:

  • Abstract submission deadline: September 28, 2021
  • Acceptance notification: October 12, 2021
  • Poster session: November 02, 2021
  • Award winners announced at ICCAD
  • Grand Finals winners honored at ACM Awards Banquet: June 2022 (Estimated)

Requirement:
Students submitting and presenting their work at SRC@ICCAD’21 are required to be members of both ACM and ACM SIGDA.

Organizers:

Meng Li (Facebook, USA), meng.li@fb.com

Cong Hao (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA), callie.hao@ece.gatech.edu


Last Year’s Results (2020): SIGDA SRC Gold Medalists won ACM SRC Grand Finals

  • Graduate: First Place

Jiaqi Gu, University of Texas at Austin

Research Advisors: David Z. Pan and Ray T. Chen

“Light in Artificial Intelligence: Efficient Neuromorphic Computing with Optical Neural Networks” (ICCAD 2020)

Deep neural networks have received an explosion of interest for their superior performance in various intelligent tasks and high impacts on our lives. The computing capacity is in an arms race with the rapidly escalating model size and data amount for intelligent information processing. Practical application scenarios, e.g., autonomous vehicles, data centers, and edge devices, have strict energy efficiency, latency, and bandwidth constraints, raising a surging need to develop more efficient computing solutions. However, as Moore’s law is winding down, it becomes increasingly challenging for conventional electrical processors to support such massively parallel and energy-hungry artificial intelligence (AI) workloads. .. [Read more]

  • Undergraduate: Second Place

Chuangtao Chen, Zhejiang University

Research Advisor: Cheng Zhuo

“Optimally Approximated Floating-Point Multiplier” (ICCAD 2020)

At the edge, IoT devices are designed to consume the minimum resource to achieve the desired accuracy. However, the conventional processors, such as CPU or GPU, can only conduct all the computations with predetermined but sometimes unnecessary precisions, inevitably degrading their energy efficiency. When running data-intensive applications, due to the large range of input operands, most conventional processors heavily rely on floating-point units (FPUs). Recently, approximate computing has become a promising alternative to improve energy efficiency for IoT devices on the edge, especially when running inaccuracy-tolerable applications. For various data-intensive tasks on edge devices, multiplication is a common but the most energy consuming one among different floating-point operations. As a common arithmetic component that has been studied for decades [1]–[3], the past focus on the FP multiplier is accuracy and performance… [Read more]

Organizers Guide

ACM/SIGDA Guide to Running or Starting a Conference, Symposium, or Workshop

Revised on May 1, 2020

ACM/SIGDA sponsors a number of conferences, symposia, and workshops, which will be referred to generically as events. The event staff are almost always volunteers, and those involved change on a yearly basis. The purpose of this guide is to give a short overview of how events are run, make you aware of services that ACM and SIGDA can provide, and to help simplify the entire process.

This guide is divided into four sections. First is the “financial” aspect of running an event: contracts with hotels, registration, etc. Second is the “administrative” component: selecting a program committee, setting up a timeline, handling paper submissions and reviews, creating and archiving the event web site, and passing control to the next set of organizers. Third is a checklist and timeline, to give an idea of when various tasks should be done. The last part is about the travel grant.
 
Financial View
SIGDA is a non-profit professional society–there is no expectation that an event (particularly a new one) will return a large surplus. Having some positive revenue, however, is desirable. The bulk of funds that are used to support student travel, reduced student registrations, online access to DA literature, salary for permanent staff, insurance coverage, among other things, comes from conference revenue. SIGDA membership fees provide almost no revenue.
 
Cosponsorship and In Cooperation
Most events are cosponsored by some branch of the IEEE; some events have other cosponsors. Generally, sponsorship implies financial and legal responsibility for the event. That includes providing insurance, accepting liability for contracts and covering any deficit the conference might incur. If the conference should have a surplus, the sponsor or co-sponsor will receive a portion of that surplus based on their percentage of sponsorship. Co-sponsorship percentages rarely change; both ACM and IEEE are interested in having good cooperation between the societies, and by sharing both risks and rewards across the societies, service is improved for the members. Dual sponsorship also broadens the audience for any advertising, improving overall attendance. In some cases, a group may be “in cooperation” — which implies that they see value in the technical program and wish to lend their name to the event without taking on any financial or legal responsibility.

TMRF — Technical Meeting Request Form
A TMRF is a large spreadsheet that details the expected attendance, registration costs, hotel costs, printing costs, and so forth. The objective is to determine if the event is financially viable, and in keeping with prior years. The organizers of an event will need to file a TMRF, and receive approval, before ACM will accept any financial responsibility. One common concern is with respect to some additional fees in the TMRF based on total expenditures. These fees go to cover ACM insurance and liability expenses, and help cover the salaries of the permanent staff at ACM.

Care should be taken when preparing a TMRF; try to keep all costs and projected revenues within reason–in some cases, approval has been delayed due to budget concerns. We stress again that there is no requirement for an event (particularly a new one) to turn a profit, although this is preferable. If an event is profitable, it enables SIGDA to fund other activities, to support events in new areas, and to weather short term losses without sacrificing member services.

ACM Support Staff
ACM employs a number of permanent staff to assist in planning and running an event. In particular, the staff has data on the following.

  • Other events in a given city, and on a given date. Hotel prices may be extremely high if you are planning your event in a town that is hosting a major activity.
  • Listings of hotels in a given town, with rough estimates on the number of attendees they can support, the types of conference rooms available, etc.
  • Obviously, having a successful event will require good location at a time the attendees find convenient. Consulting the ACM staff on this is highly recommended. The ACM staff involved with supporting events can be found on our Who’s Who page and ACM’s SIG volunteer resources page.

Contracts
Never sign any contract personally. If a disaster occurs, a hotel may hold you responsible for all charges. For example, a conference scheduled to be held a few days after the 9/11 terrorist attack was cancelled. The hotel that was to hold the event lost many room bookings, which was charged back to the sponsoring societies, costing them thousands of dollars. ACM and SIGDA are prepared to accept this type of financial liability. As an event organizer, you should not put yourself in this position.

We recommend that you allow the ACM staff to do the bulk of the negotiation with the hotel or conference center. They are familiar with industry practices, know typical rates, and can use the membership of ACM as leverage for better deals. The staff will keep you informed, and will work to find arrangements that are to your satisfaction.

Registration
Allowing early registration through the web is highly recommended; this is a good way to get an early estimate on attendance. ACM can support electronic registration, but must charge some fees to cover related expenses and the time required for the support staff.

There are several ways to handle on-site registration: you may have either volunteer staff or a professional organization, and you may wish to accept cash, checks, or credit cards. If you accept credit cards, billing immediately will require phone access, equipment, and coordination with a credit agency. We would recommend instead simply recording the credit card number manually, and then having ACM process the charges after the event.

If the event is relatively small, we highly recommend finding volunteers to man the registration desk; professional conference management can be quite expensive
 
Administration

Executive Committee
Most events have an “executive committee” consiting of a general chair, program committee chair, publications chair, and publicity chair. Larger events may have more positions. In most cases, there is a progression of staff through the positions, allowing new members to gain experience before taking control of an event.

Program Committee
For paper review, a program committee should be formed. We encourage a balance of academic and industry representatives. Selection of committee members should be done carefully: a well-respected group will improve the public perception of accepted papers, encourage good research groups to submit papers, and will improve attendance.

Timeline
We recommend setting a timeline for all tasks related to the event. By setting the timeline, all committee members will know when certain tasks must be done, and will be able to plan accordingly. At the end of this document we show a sample timeline that contains common tasks. Specific dates obviously depend on the event itself. Carefully adjusting the dates to fit in with other events is beneficial. For example, it might be possible to arrange a program committee meeting to follow a widely attended conference, which reduces the cost of attending the meeting and improves committee members’ participation. When possible, advertising should be scheduled to coincide with similar events.

Paper Submission, Review, and Selection
Paper submission should be performed electronically; this greatly simplifies the submission and review process. Supported file formats (PDF, PostScript, DOC, text, etc.) are at the discretion of the program committee, although we suggest that PDF be the preferred format. ACM has style guidelines for proceedings and journal papers, and these should be referenced on any call for papers or submission web site.

There are a number of conference paper management software packages. At one point, ACM investigated supporting one in-house. Each program committee seemed to have a specific package that they were quite loyal to, making centralized support impractical. If your program committee does not have a specific preference, check with ACM staff to see if there is a supported package.

Web based conference software generally supports online review submission. We suggest sending periodic “warning” emails to reviewers, letting them know the review deadlines. Without these reminders, many reviewers may wait until the last minute, resulting in low-quality reviews.

Paper selection should be performed by the program committee in a timely fashion. A fast turn-around on submissions will benefit authors, and increase the number of submitted papers.

Proceedings — Printed and Electronic
The print version of the proceedings will require coordination with the printer. There will be deadlines for final camera-ready paper submissions, table of contents, etc. Plan for some authors being a few days late with submissions, and allow for unexpected delays.

Generally, workshops do not have “published” proceedings. Discuss with the ACM staff if the event material should be considered as a publication. For workshops, many authors may be willing to discuss preliminary results, as long as it does not preclude them from publishing the work in a larger venue.

ACM/SIGDA supports online access to all sponsored event material. It can be made available through the ACM portal, the SIGDA web site, and on annual SIGDA publication compendiums. Part of the revenue from successful conferences has allowed SIGDA to subsidize this publication, making all material available free of charge. For events co-sponsored with IEEE, the material is likely still available free of charge; IEEE and ACM have been cooperating actively to make publications as widely available as possible.

Creation and Archival of a Web Site
ACM provides free-of-charge web hosting and web site archival for sponsored events. Even domain registration fees can be covered. Funding for this activity is derived from budget surpluses from successful sponsored events.

If the web hosting for your event is not currently handled by ACM, contact the staff, and they will assist in setting things up.

Handoff to the Next Organizers
Perhaps the most important task for an executive committee is making arrangements to hand off the event to a new group. The next executive committee will need to know attendance, number of submissions, acceptance rate, planned and actual expenses, and any comments from the attendees. We recommend having the next set of organizers identified early–perhaps by the time of the event–giving enough time for them to prepare and have success for the next year.
 
Checklist
We would suggest filling in dates for the following events as soon as possible, and then distributing the checklist to the executive committee. This should help committee members from missing important task deadlines, and makes sure that no one is “in the dark.”

  • Contact ACM staff for preliminary event planning.
  • Finalize the event executive committee.
  • Recruit technical program committee members.
  • Establish event website.
  • Identify event location and venue; ACM staff members should be able to help.
  • Submit TMRF to ACM.
  • Publish “Call for Papers” deadline in print.
  • Publish “Call for Papers” electronically.
  • Establish and publish paper submission deadline.
  • Assign papers to reviewers.
  • Review submission deadline.
  • Call meeting of the Technical Program Committee.
  • Print deadline for “Call for Participation.”
  • Notify authors.
  • Have papers ready for camera-ready paper deadline.
  • Distribute electronic call for participation.
  • Begin accepting conference registrations.
  • Identify executive committee members for next year.
  • Event.
  • Collect statistics on event for ACM and next organizers.
  • Hand over control to the next committee.

Travel grants:

  1. If the conference event is solely financially sponsored by the ACM SIGDA, or is jointly financially sponsored by ACM SIGDA and other organizations, the conference organizer is generally suggested to include travel grants into the conference budget. In this case, the travel grant will be handled by the event organizer;
  2. For any reason that 1 cannot be implemented, the participants of the conference can apply for ACM SIGDA travel grants directly from the ACM SIGDA. In this case, the travel grants will be handled by the ACM SIGDA, or handled by the conference organizer authorized by the ACM SIGDA.

CADathlon 2018@ICCAD

SIGDA’s CADathlon 2018 at ICCAD

Sunday, Nov. 4, 2018  8 am – 5 pm, Hilton San Diego Resort & Spa,  San Diego, CA

[trophy]

Welcome to the CADathlon @ ICCAD

The CADathlon is a challenging, all-day, programming competition focusing on practical problems at the forefront of Computer-Aided Design,
and Electronic Design Automation in particular. The contest emphasizes the knowledge of algorithmic techniques for CADapplications,
problem-solving and programming skills, as well as teamwork.
In its 15th year as the “Olympic games of EDA,” the contest brings together the best and the brightest of the next generation of CAD
professionals. It gives academia and the industry a unique perspective on challenging problems and rising stars, and it also helps attract
top graduate students to the EDA field.
The contest is open to two-person teams of graduate students specializing in CAD and currently full-time enrolled in a Ph.D. granting
institution in any country. Students are selected based on their academic backgrounds and their relevant EDA programming experiences.
Partial or full travel grants are provided to qualifying students. CADathlon competition consists of six problems in the following areas:

  • Circuit Design & Analysis
  • Physical Design & Design for Manufacturability
  • Logic & High-Level Synthesis
  • System Design & Analysis
  • Functional Verification & Testing
  • Future technologies (Bio-EDA, Security, AI, etc.)

More specific information about the problems and relevant research papers will be released on the Internet one week prior to the
competition. The writers and judges that construct and review the problems are experts in EDA from both academia and industry. At the
contest, students will be given the problem statements and example test data, but they will not have the judges’ test data. Solutions
will be judged on correctness and efficiency. Where appropriate, partial credit might be given.
The team that earns the highest score is declared the winner. In addition to handsome trophies, the first place and the second place teams
receive cash award, and the contest winners will be announced at the ICCAD Opening Session on Monday morning and celebrated
at the ACM/SIGDA Dinner and Member Meeting on Monday evening.
 

Global Education Partner:

cadence-logo

LIVE

SIGDA Live is a series of webinars, launched monthly or bi-monthly, on topics (either technical or non-technical) of general interest to the SIGDA community. The talks in general fall on the last Wednesday of a month, and last about 45 minutes plus 15 minutes Q&A. Speaker and topic nominations are welcome and should be sent to sigdalive@gmail.com. All past talks are archived through our Youtube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/channel. Each year we recognize one speaker with the “Most Influential Speaker of the Year” award.

OrganizersYiyu Shi (University of Notre Dame), Qinru Qiu (Syracuse University)

Technical supportBei Yu (Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Recent SIGDA-sponsored presentations: