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The CADathlon Brasil 2022 – 2^nd Brazilian Programming Contest for Design Automation of Integrated Circuits (https://csbc.sbc.org.br/2022/cadathlon-brasil-en/) took place on August 2^nd in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil, as a co-located event of the 42^nd Annual Congress of SBC (Brazilian Computer Society). It was organized by Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) and Fluminense Federal University (UFF) and sponsored by ACM/SIGDA, IEEE CEDA (Council on Electronic Design Automation), SBC/CECCI (SBC Special Committee on Integrated Circuits and Systems Design) and SBMicro (Brazilian Microelectronics Society). It was financially sponsored by Synopsys, Chipus Microelectronics, ACM/SIGDA and IEEE CEDA.

As in the first edition, CADAthlon Brasil 2022 followed the same format as the ACM/SIGDA CADathlon, which happens annually co-located with ICCAD (International Conference on Computer-Aided Design). During the whole day, 15 two-person teams of students coming from different regions of Brazil worked to solve 6 practical problems on classical EDA topics such as circuit design & analysis, physical design, logic synthesis, high-level synthesis, circuit verification, and application of AI to design automation. The problems were prepared by a team of researchers from industry and academia.

This year the first place was won by team “turma da Monica”, from University of Brasília (UnB), formed by Enzo Yoshio Niho and Eduardo Quirino de Oliveira, and the second place was won by team “Rabisco UFSC”, from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), formed by Arthur Joao Lourenço and Bernardo Borges Sandoval. The top 2 teams were awarded money prizes offered by Synopsys.

The CADAthlon Brasil 2022 Organizing Committee greatly thanks the Congress of SBC organizers for the logistics support, the problem preparation team and all sponsors, specially the financial support from Synopsys, Chipus Microelectronics, ACM/SIGDA and IEEE CEDA (through the South Brazil Chapter), which made it possible to cover the travel expenses of the competitors, making the event a huge success.

The next edition of CADathlon Brasil will occur as a co-located event of the 43^rd Annual Congress of SBC, in July 2023, in Joao Pessoa, northeast region of Brazil.

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The SIGDA award selection committee is honored to announce that Prof. Rob Rutenbar has been selected to receive the 2021 ACM SIGDA Pioneering Achievement Award.

for his pioneering work and extraordinary leadership in analog design automation and general EDA education.

As the highest technical distinction of ACM SIGDA, this award is to recognize the lifetime of outstanding achievements on Electronic Design Automation.

This award will be presented in SIGDA Annual Member Meeting and Dinner at ICCAD 2022. 

Dear Members of ACM SIGDA,

After two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is slowly returning to a new normal. In the Design Automation Conference (DAC) held in San Francisco last month, more than a thousand engineers, scholars, and students gathered in person for the first time in the last two and half years. They presented research ideas, exchanged industrial and societal information, and discussed collaboration opportunities. The only notable difference was probably that everyone was  wearing a mask. 

As  the world reopened from the pandemic, SIGDA elected its new executive committee (EC) in the summer of 2021. Like its predecessors, the new EC is responsible for all regular operations  of SIGDA, including conferences, publications and media, educational and technical activities, awards, and members’ benefits. Understandably, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought numerous unprecedented challenges that the current EC, and the whole SIGDA in general, are facing: disrupted international travels, unpredictable outbreaks of local epidemics, and lack of efficient and effective communications among our members, to name a few. Fortunately, the volunteers of SIGDA and the whole society at large have accumulated extensive experience in overcoming these challenges: the successful in-person DAC last month was just a perfect example. 

Building on these experiences, the new EC has been working tirelessly with our volunteers and the whole society to meet these challenges and prepare for the era after the pandemic. A new “Who’s Who” column of the SIGDA website (https://www.sigda.org/whos-who/) has been launched so that we’d still be able to learn about those active young researchers and scholars all over the world. A new version of ACM/SIGDA E-Newsletter is in the works, among many initiatives that are being planned. I am very proud of how our members, volunteers, and SIGDA leadership team have persevered through the challenging times and have also been delighted to witness the remarkable progress and achievements we have made in the past year. With this message we not only celebrate a successful 2021 with you, but also look forward to sharing some big goals and ideas soon! Our fellows will get in touch with you in the new year about our new plans and initiatives.

My warmest wishes to all the SIGDA members and their families for a healthy, restorative and productive 2022!

Yiran Chen

Chair of ACM SIGDA

The entire electronic design automation (EDA) community is in profound grief for the loss of Davide Giri, a graduate student at Columbia University, who fell victim to a horrific violence last Friday (December 3, 2021).  On behalf of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Design Automation (SIGDA) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA), we would like to extend our most heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Davide Giri.

Davide Giri, a Ph.D. Candidate of Computer Science, had been an active contributor to a number of important research projects on architectures and system-level design methodologies for heterogeneous System-on-Chip (SoC). He was also the author of multiple papers published in the top conferences and journals in our fields. The EDA community mourns the loss of such a bright young researcher who should have a very promising career.

Unfortunately, this tragedy is just one of many atrocious attacks that have recently happened to graduate students. We condemn the senseless violence and would like to urge the government, universities, and communities to take effective actions to protect the safety of our students and faculty members.

The ACM SIGDA and IEEE CEDA would like to offer help and support to anyone in our community who is impacted by such tragic events, physically or emotionally. We also encourage our members to reach out to the family, friends, and colleagues of Davide Giri, express our condolences, and help each other heal from such a big emotional loss. We hope that through our collective voice and power, we will lift up fellow members of our community during this trying time.

Regards,

Yiran Chen, Chair of ACM SIGDA

Yao-Wen Chang, President of IEEE CEDA