The SIGDA Electronic Newsletter, E-Newsletter, is the main resource for the EDA professional, disseminating news and upcoming events in the general areas of Design Automation and related domains. The E-Newsletter was started in late 2002, replacing the printed version. The E-Newsletter is distributed monthly on the 1st of each month. It includes several sections of interest to the EDA professional, including:
News headlines (SIGDA News).
“What is…?”, a column featuring recent technical concepts of broad DA interest.
Upcoming deadlines for conferences, symposia, and workshops.
Upcoming events, such as conferences, symposia, and workshops.
Announcements for upcoming SIGDA-sponsored and EDA-related events.
In honor of the memory of Dr. A. Richard Newton, the A. Richard Newton Young Student Fellow program encourages students to join the electronic design automation field and/or consider graduate studies in this field. In each year, the program sponsors 60-70 students to participate various technical activities at the Design Automation Conference.
Each selected fellow will receive a full free DAC conference registration, including tutorials, along with a travel award that can cover travel, lodging, and incidentals. As a group, the awardee will participate in the following activities at DAC:
Kickoff breakfast meeting on Sunday morning.
Participate in the Design Automation Summer School on Sunday.
Selected conference sessions, including sessions with Best Paper Award nominations
Poster presentation introducing each Fellow (either current research, or relevant coursework/projects) during the DAC student event on Tuesday evening.
Attendance at the Awards Session
Attendance at the closing session during the Thursday evening reception.
Use social media (tweets, facebook, linkedIn, etc.) to provide timely news, photos and feedback on events during DAC. Students are expected to blog at least twice daily.
More details about submission format and details: DAC website.
Supported by the Design Automation Conference which ACM/SIGDA sponsors, the objective of the P. O. Pistilli Scholarship is to increase the pool of professionals in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from underrepresented groups (Women, African American, Hispanic, American Indian, and Disabled). Scholarships of $4000 per year, renewable for up to 5 years, are awarded annually to 2-7 high school seniors from the above mentioned under represented groups who have a 3.00 GPA or better (on a 4.00 scale), have demonstrated high achievement in math and science courses, have expressed a strong desire to pursue careers in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or computer science, and who have demonstrated substantial financial need. U.S. citizenship is not required, but applicants must be U.S. residents when they apply and must plan to attend an accredited US college or university.
Presented by the ACM Special Interest Group on Design Automation.
Description: To honor a person for lifetime, outstanding contributions within the scope of electronic design automation, as evidenced by ideas pioneered in publications, industrial products, or other relevant contributions. The award is based on the impact of the contributions throughout the nominee’s lifetime.
Background: The ACM Special Interest Group on Design Automation sponsors or co-sponsors the ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems Best Paper Award, the William McCalla Award for best paper at the International Conference on Computer-Aided Design, and the ACM/IEEE A. Richard Newton Technical Impact in Electronic Design Automation Award which is given to authors of a publication authored at least ten years earlier and that has had an outstanding contribution to the field of EDA. In addition, SIGDA sponsors the ACM Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award in Electronic Design Automation which is given each year to a graduating Ph.D. student in recognition of his/her thesis contributions to advancement in the EDA field. The Pioneering Achievement Award complements these awards and is intended for contributors whose impact is typically recognized over a lifetime of outstanding achievements.
Eligibility: Open to researchers in the field of electronic design automation who have had outstanding contributions in the field during their lifetime. Current members of the Board of the ACM Special Interest Group on Design Automation, or members of the Award Selection Committee are ineligible for the award. The awardee is invited to give a lecture at a SIGDA-sponsored event.
Award Items: A plaque for the awardee, a citation, and $1000 honorarium. The honorarium will be funded by the SIGDA annual budget.
Nominee Solicitation: The call for nominees will be published by email to members of SIGDA, on the web site of ACM’s Special Interest Group on Design Automation, and in the SIGDA newsletter. The nomination should be proposed by someone other than the nominee. The nomination materials should be emailed to SIGDA-Award@acm.org (Subject: ACM/SIGDA Pioneering Achievement Award). Nominations for the award should include:
A nomination letter that gives: a 100-word description of the nominee’s contribution and its impact; a 750-word detailed description of up to 10 of the nominee’s major products (papers, patents, software, etc.), the contributions embodied in those products, and their impact; a list of at most 10 citations to the major products discussed in the description.
Three letters of recommendation (not including the nominator or nominee).
Contact information of the nominator.
In addition to the evidence of impact, the nomination form will include biographical information (including education and employment), professional activities, publications, and recognition. Three endorsements attesting to the impact of the work may be included.
Award Committee: Selection will be made by the ACM Special Interest Group in Design Automation Executive Committee based on the recommendation of a Pioneer Award committee. The Committee will meet to review nominations, review the recommendations of the Pioneer Award Committee, and make a selection. After selection, the committee will contact the recipient to ensure that the award will be accepted and he or she will be able to deliver the talk at the SIGDA Annual Member Meeting and Dinner at ICCAD.
All standard conflict of interest regulations as stated in ACM policy will be applied (see https://awards.acm.org/conflict-of-interest). Any awards committee members will recuse themselves from consideration of any candidates where a conflict of interest may exist.
Schedule: The call for nominees will be published annually. The nomination deadline is Aug 31st. The award will be announced at one or more subsequent SIGDA events and the awardee will be invited to give a talk on his/her work at the SIGDA Annual Member Meeting and Dinner at ICCAD.
Selection/Basis for Judging: This award honors an individual who has made an outstanding technical contribution in the scope of electronic design automation throughout his or her lifetime. The award is based on the impact of the contributions as indicated above. Nominees from universities, industry, and government worldwide will be considered and encouraged. The award is not a best paper or initial original contribution award. Instead, it is intended for lifetime, outstanding contributions within the scope of electronic design automation, throughout the nominee’s lifetime.
Presentation: The award will be presented annually at the SIGDA Annual Member Meeting and Dinner at ICCAD.
Publicity: In ACM/SIGDA publications and at conferences sponsored by ACM/SIGDA.
2022: Ron Rohrer, SMU, CMU
For the introduction and evolution of simulation and analysis techniques that have supported the design and test of integrated circuits and systems for more than half a century.
2021: Prof. Rob Rutenbar, PITT
For his pioneering work and extraordinary leadership in analog design automation and general EDA education.
2020: Prof. Jacob A. Abraham, UT Austin
For pioneering and fundamental contributions to manufacturing testing and fault-tolerant operation of computing systems.
2019: Prof. Giovanni De Micheli, EPFL
For pioneering and fundamental contributions to synthesis and optimization of integrated circuits and networks-on-chip.
2018: Prof. Alberto Sangiovanni Vincentelli, UC Berkeley
For pioneering and fundamental contributions to design automation research and industry, in system-level design, embedded systems, logic synthesis, physical design and circuit simulation.
2017: Prof. Mary Jane Irwin, Pennsylvania State University
For contributions to VLSI architectures, electronic design automation and community membership.
2016: Prof. Chung Laung (Dave) Liu, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan (emeritus)
For the fundamental and seminal contributions to physical design and embedded systems.
2014: Prof. John P. Hayes, University of Michigan
2013: Prof. Donald E. Thomas, Carnegie Mellon University
For his pioneering work in making the Verilog Hardware Description Language more accessible for the design automation community and allowing for faster and easier pathways to simulation, high-level synthesis, and co-design of hardware-software systems.
2012: Dr. Louise Trevillyan, IBM
Recognizing her almost-40-year career in EDA and her groundbreaking research contributions in logic and physical synthesis, design verification, high-level synthesis, processor performance analysis, and compiler technology.
2011: Prof. Robert K. Brayton, UC Berkeley
For outstanding contributions to the field of Computer Aided Design of integrated systems over the last several decades.
2010: Prof. Scott Kirkpatrick, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
On Solving Hard Problems by Analogy Automated electronic design is not the only field in which surprising analogies from other fields of science have been used to deal with the challenges of very large problem sizes, requiring optimization across multiple scales, with constraints which eliminate any elegant solutions. Similar opportunities arise, for example, in logistics, in scheduling, in portfolio optimization and other classic problems. The common ingredient in all of these is that the problems are fundamentally frustrated, in that conflicting objectives must be traded off at all scales. This, plus the irregular structure in such real world problems eliminates any easy routes to the best solutions. Of course, in engineering, the real objective is not a global optimum, but a solution that is “good enough” and can be obtained “soon enough” to be useful. The model in materials science that gave rise by analogy to simulated annealing is the spin glass, which recently surfaced again in computer science as a vehicle whose inherent complexity might answer the long-vexing question of whether P can be proved not equal to NP.
2009: Prof. Martin Davis, NYU
For his fundamental contributions to algorithms for solving the Boolean Satisfiability problem, which heavily influenced modern tools for hardware and software verifciation, as well as logic circuit synthesis.
2008: Prof. Edward J. McCluskey, Stanford
For his outstanding contributions to the areas of CAD, test and reliable computing during the past half of century.
2007: Dr. Gene M. Amdahl, Amdahl Corporation
Award citation: For his outstanding contributions to the computing industry on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Amdahl’s Law. Video of Dr. Amdahl’s dinner talk and a panel debate are available on the ACM digital library.
ACM Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award in Electronic Design Automation
Design automation has gained widespread acceptance by the VLSI circuits and systems design community. Advancement in computer-aided design (CAD) methodologies, algorithms, and tools has become increasingly important to cope with the rapidly growing design complexity, higher performance and low-power requirements, and shorter time-to-market demands. To encourage innovative, ground-breaking research in the area of electronic design automation, the ACM’s Special Interest Group on Design Automation (SIGDA) has established an ACM award to be given each year to an outstanding Ph.D. dissertation that makes the most substantial contribution to the theory and/or application in the field of electronic design automation.
The award consists of a certificate and a check for $1,000 and is presented at the Design Automation Conference, which is held in June/July of each year. The award is selected by a committee of experts from academia and industry in the field and appointed by ACM in consultation with the SIGDA Chair.
Deadline: November 30th of each year
Nomination requirements: Each department of any university may nominate at most two Ph.D. dissertations whose final submission date is between July 1st of the previous year and June 30th of the current year. Each nomination package must be emailed by November 30 and should consists of:
The PDF file of the Ph.D. dissertation. If the nominated Ph.D. dissertation is not written in English, an English translation of the entire dissertation must be included in the nomination package.
A statement (up to two pages) from the nominee explaining the significance and major contributions of the work.
A nomination letter from nominee’s department chair or dean of the school endorsing the application.
Optionally, up to three letters of recommendation from experts in the field. These letters may be included in the nomination package or sent separately to the address below.
The nomination materials should be emailed to SIGDA-Award@acm.org (Subject: ACM Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award in EDA).
All standard conflict of interest regulations as stated in ACM policy will be applied (see https://awards.acm.org/conflict-of-interest). Any awards committee members will recuse themselves from consideration of any candidates where a conflict of interest may exist.
Past Awardees
2023
Zhiyao Xie, for the dissertation “Intelligent Circuit Design and Implementation with Machine Learning”, Duke University, Advisors: Yiran Chen and Hai Li
2022
Ganapati Bhat, for the dissertation “Design, Optimization, and Applications of Wearable IoT Devices”, Arizona State University, Advisor: Umit Y. Ogras
2021
Ahmedullah Aziz, for the dissertation “Device-Circuit Co-Design Employing Phase Transition Materials for Low power Electronics”, Purdue University, Advisor: Sumeet Gupta.
2020
Gengjie Chen, for the dissertation “VLSI Routing: Seeing Nano Tree in Giga Forest,” The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Advisor: Evangeline Young.
2019
Tsung-Wei Huang, for the dissertation “Distributed Timing Analysis“, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Advisor: Martin D. F. Wong.
2018
Xiaoqing Xu, for the dissertation “Standard Cell Optimization and Physical Design in Advanced Technology Nodes,” University of Texas at Austin. Advisor: David Z. Pan.
Pramod Subramanyan, for the dissertation “Deriving Abstractions to Address Hardware Platform Security Challenges,” Princeton University. Advisor: Sharad Malik.
2017
Jeyavijayan Rajendran, for the dissertation “Trustworthy Integrated Circuit Design,” New York University. Advisor: Ramesh Karri.
2016
Zheng Zhang, for the dissertation “Uncertainty Quantification for Integrated Circuits and Microelectromechanical Systems,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Advisor: Luca Daniel.
Guojie Luo, for the dissertation “Placement and Design Planning for 3D integrated Circuits,” UCLA. Advisor: Jason Cong
2012
Tan Yan, for the dissertation “Algorithmic Studies on PCB Routing,” defended with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
2011
Nishant Patil, for the dissertation “Design and Fabrication of Imperfection-Immune Carbon Nanotube Digital VLSI Circuits,” Stanford University.
2010
Himanshu Jain, for the dissertation “Verification using Satisfiability Checking, Predicate Abstraction, and Craig Interpolation,” Carnegie Mellon University.
2009
Kai-Hui Chang, for the dissertation “Functional Design Error Diagnosis, Correction and Layout Repair of Digital Circuits”, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
Shuvendu Lahiri of Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, for a thesis entitled “Unbounded System Verification using Decision Procedure and Predicate Abstraction”
2004
Chao Wang of University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of Electrical Engineering, for a thesis entitled “Abstraction Refinement for Large Scale Model Checking”
Lintao Zhang of Princeton University Department of Electrical Engineering for a thesis entitled “Searching for truth: techniques for satisfiability of Boolean formulas.”
2002
(No award is given this year)
2001
Darko Kirovski from University of California, Los Angeles Department of Computer Science for a thesis entitled “Constraint Manipulation Techniques for Synthesis and Verification of Embedded Systems.” The runner-up who received an honorable mention in that years ceremony was Michael Beattie of Carnegie Mellon University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering for a thesis entitled “Efficient Electromagnetic Modeling for Giga-scale IC Interconnect.”
The SIGDA Outstanding New Faculty Award recognizes a junior faculty member early in her or his academic career who demonstrates outstanding potential as an educator and/or researcher in the field of electronic design automation. While prior research and/or teaching accomplishments are important, the selection committee will especially consider the impact that the candidate has had on her or his department and on the EDA field during the initial years of their academic appointment. The award is presented annually at Design Automation Conference, and currently consists of a $1,000 award to the faculty member, along with a citation.
Eligibility: SIGDA Outstanding new faculty who are developing academic careers in areas in or related to electronic design automation are encouraged to apply for this award. Note that this award is not intended for senior or highly experienced investigators who have already established independent research careers, even if they are new to academia. Candidates must have recently completed at least one full academic year and no more than four full academic years in a tenure-track position. Applications will also be considered from people whose appointments are continuing (non-visiting) positions with substantial educational responsibilities regardless whether or not they are tenure track. Persons holding research-only positions are not eligible. Exceptions to the timing requirements will be made for persons who have interrupted their academic careers for substantive reasons, such as family or medical leave. The presence of such reasons must be attested by the sponsoring institution, but no explanation is needed.
Application: Candidates applying for the award must submit the following to the selection committee no later than November 30 of the current year:
a 2-page statement summarizing the candidate’s teaching and research accomplishments since beginning their current academic position, as well as an indication of plans for further development over the next five years;
a copy of a current curriculum vitae;
a letter from either the candidate’s department chair or dean endorsing the application.
The nomination materials should be emailed by the deadline to SIGDA-Award@acm.org (Subject: ACM/SIGDA Outstanding New Faculty Award).
All standard conflict of interest regulations as stated in ACM policy will be applied (see https://awards.acm.org/conflict-of-interest). Any awards committee members will recuse themselves from consideration of any candidates where a conflict of interest may exist.
ACM/IEEE A. Richard Newton Technical Impact Award in Electronic Design Automation
The 2023 award goes to Moshe Vardi and Pierre Wolper for their research work “An Automata-Theoretic Approach to Automatic Program Verification”, published in the proceedings of the 1st Symposium on Logic in Computer Science,1986.
Description: To honor a person or persons for an outstanding technical contribution within the scope of electronic design automation, as evidenced by a paper published at least ten years before the presentation of the award. The award is based on the impact of the contribution.
Background: The IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation sponsors or co-sponsors the Donald Pederson Award for best paper in IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design, the William McCalla Award for best paper at the International Conference on Computer-Aided Design, and the Phil Kaufman Award for Distinguished Contributions to Electronic Design Automation (with the EDA Consortium). The Kaufmann Award is the major award normally given to a senior person in the field for distinguished contributions. The other IEEE CEDA awards recognize outstanding publications. The ACM Special Interest Group on Design Automation sponsors or co-sponsors the ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems Best Paper Award, the William McCalla Award for best paper at the International Conference on Computer-Aided Design, and two awards for outstanding graduate students and new faculty. The ACM Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award is given each year to a graduating Ph.D. student in recognition of his/her thesis contributions to advancement in the EDA field. The SIGDA Outstanding New Faculty Award is also given each year to a junior faculty whose research contributions are likely to make a significant impact. The proposed A. Richard Newton Technical Impact Award complements these awards and is intended for contributors whose impact is recognized over a significant period of time. The Award honors A. Richard Newton, a luminary in the design automation area in academia and industry, faculty contributor and advisor to many of the leaders in the field, company founder, and dean of engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, who died in 2007. Professor Newton embodied the idea of technical impact which this award seeks to recognize.
Nominee Solicitation: The call for nominees will be published each fall by email to members of participating societies, by flyers and publicity at the International Conference on Computer-Aided Design, and on the web sites of the IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation (and its participating societies) and the web site of ACM’s Special Interest Group on Design Automation, in the SIGDA and CEDA newsletters, and in IEEE Design & Test magazine. The nomination form will ask for (i) the paper and authors to be honored, (ii) a proposed citation, (iii) a description of the impact of the paper over at least a ten-year period, including evidence in support of the significant intellectual contributions and high impact in the field of the nominated paper. At minimum, supporting material should cover these aspects of impact:
impact on the research community reflected in citations
impact on the practitioner community via evidence of usage of the described technology in an industrial setting
impact on the EDA community as a whole via evidence of starting new directions and spawning new ideas
In addition to the evidence of impact, the nomination form will include biographical information (including education and employment), professional activities, publications, and recognition. Three endorsements attesting to the impact of the work may be included. The nomination materials should be emailed by the deadline to SIGDA-Award@acm.org (Subject: ACM/IEEE A. Richard Newton Technical Impact Award in Electronic Design Automation).
Award Committee: Selection will be made by a committee comprised of three members designated by the IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation and three members designated by the ACM Special Interest Group in Design Automation. The Committee will meet in February of each year to review nominations and make a recommendation to the sponsoring Council and SIG by March 15. Following approval by the sponsors, the committee will contact the recipient to ensure that the award will be accepted.
All standard conflict of interest regulations as stated in ACM policy will be applied (see https://awards.acm.org/conflict-of-interest). Any awards committee members will recuse themselves from consideration of any candidates where a conflict of interest may exist.
Schedule: The call for nominees will be published annually in the fall, especially at the International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (see above). Submission deadline is Feb 1 of each year. The Awards Committee will meet in February to determine the winning paper and award recipient(s). The sponsors will approve the selection by March 15. The recipient will be notified by April 1. The award will be presented in June/July at the ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference.
Selection/Basis for Judging: This award honors an individual or a group which has made an outstanding technical contribution in the scope of electronic design automation through a paper published at least ten years before the award is presented. The award is based on the impact of the paper as indicated above. Nominees from universities, industry, and government worldwide will be considered and encouraged. The award is not a best paper or initial original contribution award. Instead, the prime consideration will be the impact on technology, industry, and education, and on working electronic designers and engineers. Such impact might include a research result that is widely cited or spawned much innovative thinking, or a new technique that has been put into wide use in practice.
Presentation: The award includes a cash prize of $1500 to be split amoung the awardees. The award will be formally presented annually at the ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference.
Publicity: Press release to industry press, articles in IEEE and ACM publications, and publicity at conferences sponsored by the CEDA, SIGDA, ACM, and IEEE.
Past Awardees
2023: Moshe Vardi and Pierre Wolper for their research work “An Automata-Theoretic Approach to Automatic Program Verification”, published in the proceedings of the 1st Symposium on Logic in Computer Science, 1986.
2022: Ricardo Telichevesky, Kenneth S. Kundert, and Jacob K. White, “Efficient Steady-State Analysis based on Matrix-Free Krylov-Subspace Methods”, In Proc. of the 32nd Design Automation Conference, 1995.
2021: John A. Waicukauski, Eric Lindbloom, Barry K. Rosen, and Vijay S. Iyengar, “Transition Fault Simulation,” IEEE Design & Test of Computers, Vol. 4, no. 2, April 1987
2020: Luca Benini and Giovanni De Micheli, “Networks on Chips: A New SoC Paradigm,” IEEE Computer, pp. 70-78, January 2002.
2019: E. B. Eichelberger and T. W. Williams, “A Logic Design Structure for LSI Testability,” In Proc. of the 14th Design Automation Conference, 1977.
2018: Hans Eisenmann and Frank M. Johannes, “Generic Global Placement and Floorplanning,” In Proc. of the 35th Design Automation Conference, 1998.
2017: Matthew W. Moskewicz, Conor F. Madigan, Ying Zhao, Lintao Zhang, and Sharad Malik, “Chaff: Engineering an Efficient SAT Solver,” In Proc. of the 38st Design Automation Conference, 2001.
2016: Chandu Visweswariah, Kaushik Ravindran, Kerim Kalafala, Steven G. Walker, Sambasivan Narayan, “First-Order Incremental Block-Based Statistical Timing Analysis,” In Proc. of the 41st Design Automation Conference, 2004.
2015: Blaise Gassend, Dwaine Clarke, Marten van Dijk, and Srinivas Devadas, “Silicon Physical Random Functions,” In Proceedings of the 9th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2002.
2014: Subhasish Mitra and Kee Sup Kim, “X-compact: an efficient response compaction technique for test cost reduction,” IEEE International Test Conference, 2002.
2013: Keith Nabors and Jacob White, “FastCap: A multipole accelerated 3-D capacitance extraction program,” IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, Vol. 10, Issue 11 (1991): 1447-1459.
2012: Altan Odabasioglu, Mustafa Celik, Larry Pileggi, “PRIMA: Passive Reduced-Order Interconnect Macromodeling Algorithm,” IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, Aug., 1998.
2011: Jason Cong, Eugene Ding, “FlowMap: An Optimal Technology Mapping Algorithm for Delay Optimization in Lookup-Table Based FPGA Designs,” IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, Jan., 1994.
2010: Randal Bryant, “Graph-based algorithms for Boolean function manipulation” IEEE Transactions on Computers, Aug., 1986.
2009: Robert K. Brayton, Richard Rudell, Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, Albert R. Wang, “MIS: A Multiple-Level Logic Optimizations System,” IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, Nov., 1997.
