1 October 2012, Vol. 42, No. 10
Online archive: http://www.sigda.org/newsletter

1. SIGDA News
       From: Lin Yuan <yuanl@synopsys.com>
2. What is Protein Identification?
       Contributing authors:
       Jason Gallia <jgallia@binghamton.edu>, Patrick Madden <pmadden@cs.binghamton.edu>, SUNY Binghamton
       From: Srinivas Katkoori <katkoori@cse.usf.edu>
3. Paper Submission Deadlines
       From: Debjit Sinha <debjitsinha@yahoo.com>
4. Upcoming Conferences and Symposia
       From: Debjit Sinha <debjitsinha@yahoo.com>
5. Upcoming Funding Opportunities
       From: Prabhat Mishra <prabhat@cise.ufl.edu>
6. Call for participation: ACM SIGDA CADathlon 2012
       From: Sudeep Pasricha <sudeep@colostate.edu>
7. Call for participation: ESWEEK 2012
       From: Ahmed Jerraya <ahmed.jerraya@cea.fr>
8. Call for papers: ISPD 2013
       From: Young Fung Yu <fyyoung@cse.cuhk.edu.hk>
9. Call for Papers: GLSVLSI 2013
       From: Alex K. Jones <akjones@pitt.edu>
10. Call for Papers: NOCS 2013
        From: Carole-Jean Wu <carole-jean.wu@asu.edu>
11. Notice of Publication: Special Issue of JECE on ESL Design Methodology
        From: Deming Chen <dchen@illinois.edu>

Comments from the Editors

Dear ACM/SIGDA members,

In this issue, we have a very interesting article on Protein
Identification. If you are interested in contributing to this column in
the future, please contact Srinivas Katkoori <katkoori@cse.usf.edu>.
An article only needs to be about 1 page long with several references.
All articles are included in the ACM digital library and there is no
restriction for the reproduction of the article for printed
publication later.

Sudeep Pasricha, E-Newsletter Editor;
Debjit Sinha, E-Newsletter Associate Editor;
Lin Yuan, E-Newsletter Associate Editor;
Srinivas Katkoori, E-Newsletter Associate Editor
Prabhat Mishra, E-Newsletter Associate Editor

Back to Contents

SIGDA News
"Plan emerges to link IP protection, China investors"
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4397365/Who-do-you-trust-to-connect-your...
China is big. China is not homogeneous. It has a poor record of protecting intellectual
property. But it also has plenty of government funding at the central, provincial
and municipal levels to go along with a massive domestic market for new technologies
and products. Add up the pluses and minuses and the Chinese market is a mixed bag.

"Xilinx All Programmable FPGAs used in robotic-assisted surgical app"
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4397196/Xilinx-All-Programmable-FPGAs-us...
The folks from Xilinx are bouncing around with excitement because they were presented
with an Outstanding Achievement award at the Electronic Product Design e-Legacy Awards
2012 event in London earlier this month.

"Erbium on silicon chip speeds up light"
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4396874/Erbium-on-silicon-chip-speeds-up...
A researcher has demonstrated that the rare earth material erbium can be integrated
with silicon for the first time to amplify an optical signal.

"Teardown: Inside Apple's iPhone 5"
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4396862/Teardown--Inside-Apple-s-iPhone-...
Apple is considered the leader in the smartphone market. In five years, the company
has generated more than $150 billion in revenue from the iPhone family of handsets
and accessories, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. More than 100 million
iPhones have been sold.

"A peek inside Apple's A6 processor"
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4396851/Teardown-points-to-Samsung-as-bu...
Apple Inc.'s A6—the processor powering its new iPhone 5—is likely fabricated by
South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and may employ ARM's "big-little" graphics
processor core scheme, according to a preliminary teardown of the handset done by UBM
TechInsights.

"Researchers develop printable lasers"
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4396745/Researchers-develop-printable-la...
Scientists from the University of Cambridge have reported a way of making organic
lasers using inkjet printing technology. The breakthrough has implications for a wide
range of potential applications from disposable lab-on-film test kits to arrays of
colored lasers for low-cost emissive displays.

"Intel's Haswell: a viable platform for tablets?"
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4396323/Intel-s-Haswell--a-viable-platfo...
Recently at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF), EE Times had the opportunity to sit
down one to one with Intel’s executive vice president, David (Dadi) Perlmutter,
general manager of the firm’s architecture group. Perlmutter was particularly
excited about Intel’s upcoming fourth generation core processor--Haswell-- which
has already made significant strides in terms of balancing high performance with much
lower power than previous generations.

"U.S. boosts funding for nanotech deployment"
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4395933/U-S--boosts-funding-for-nanotech...
Three new university research centers to be funded by the National Science Foundation
will focus on developing nanotechnology systems that could be used in electromagnetic,
mobile computing, energy and manufacturing.

"German research project aims to improve energy distribution in smart grid
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4395692/German-research-project-aims-to-...
The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is supporting "Energy
To Smart Grid" (E2SG), a major European energy research project. Six German partners
are working on new technologies for distributing power from the producer to the end
consumer.

"The Measure of Nanometer Silicon Success"
http://www10.edacafe.com/blogs/grahambell/2012/09/24/the-measure-of-nanometer-si...
I was speaking with experts at Mentor about the latest developments in back-end
physical verification (PV) and design-for-manufacturing (DFM). It prompted me to take a
look at what has changed and what will be essential going forward. Here is what I see for
this critical area for IC implementation.

"Oscillating microscopic beads could be key to biolab on a chip"
http://www10.edacafe.com/blogs/guest/2012/09/25/oscillating-microscopic-beads-co...
MIT team finds way to manipulate and measure magnetic particles without contact,
potentially enabling multiple medical tests on a tiny device.

"Researchers move quantum computing to silicon"
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4395205/Researchers-move-quantum-computi...
Quantum computing has been brought a step closer to mass production by a research
team led by scientists from the University of Bristol that has made a transition
from using glass to silicon.

Back to Contents

What is Protein Identification?
Jason Gallia and Patrick Madden
SUNY Binghamton

Protein identification is the task of determining the amino acid sequence
that makes up an unknown molecule, given limited information. In this article,
we describe collaborative work between design automation researchers and
biochemists, focusing on the identification of proteins from mass spectrometer
data. There are surprising connections to techniques used in detailed placement
and legalization which we have adapted and applied in a novel way.

Proteins molecules are a key part of the functionality of cells in living
organisms. No matter what the organism is, the proteins are constructed from a
linked chain of amino acids; there are twenty types of amino acids. The way in
which the amino acids are arranged in the chain determines the functionality.
Determining which proteins are present can help a biologist better understand
functionality, which can in turn lead to new ways to fight viruses as well better
methods to detect disease.

There are two primary methods for identification of a proteins. The first
method, Edman degradation, is performed through a series of chemical experiments
which remove a single amino acid at a time from a chain. Though this
method is very accurate, it is also time consuming and expensive.

The second method involves the use of a machine called a tandem mass
spectrometer, MS/MS. A mass spectrometer gathers proteins with similar mass,
and then breaks these into fragments, with cleavage normally occuring along
amino acid bonds. The mass of each fragment can be measured very precisely;
the quantity of fragments observed at for any given mass value are recorded,
giving a spectrum view of the protein[4].

Typical methods to identify proteins from a spectra rely heavily on fingerprint
style matching with a large database; two well known tools for this are
SEQUEST[3] and Mascot[6]. If the protein has never been sequenced before,
however, database matching will fail to give a correct result. Other approaches
such as PEAKS[5], and the one developed by our lab, use a method called de
novo sequencing. De novo sequencing uses algorithmic methods to determine the
amino acid sequence from the spacings and positions directly from the MS/MS
data[2].

The approach we employ is inspired by an integer knapsack approach to
placement legalization[1]. In the placement work, individual cells were
considered one by one, with the cost of assigning a cell to a particular location
being equal to the physical displacement of the cell. The cost for legalization
of an entire row is simply the sum of individual cell costs, allowing dynamic
programming to be applied.

For protein identification, one can simply replace displacement cost with a
metric that examines the spectra for peaks that would correspond to expected
ions. To give a greatly simplified example, if there were only three amino acids,
with masses of four, five, and six respectively, a protein with mass of ten might
have a “spike” in the spectrum at the mass value of five – or it might have two
spikes, one at four, and one at six. Using the known masses for the amino acids,
and the spike locations observed in a spectra, one can determine amino acid
sequences that could have generated the spectra.

There is growing interest in cross-disciplinary work; our group brings together
researchers from computer aided design and biochemistry to pursue problems of
common interest. Numerical techniques for placement legalization have
been adapted to handle a challenging problem in biochemistry, and we see many
further opportunities. While the optimization objectives are quite different,
many of the underlying challenges are similar.

References

[1] A. R. Agnihotri, M. C. Yildiz, A. Khatkhate, A. Mathur, S. Ono, and P. H.
Madden. Fractional Cut: Improved recursive bisection placement. In Proc.
Int. Conf. on Computer Aided Design, pages 307–310, 2003.

[2] J. Gallia, A. Tan-Wilson, and P. H. Madden. De novo protein identification
by dynamic programming (poster). In ICCABS 2011, 2011.

[3] J. R. Yates III. Database searching using mass spectrometry data.
Electrophoresis, 19(6):893–900, 1998.

[4] Michael Kinter and Nicholas E. Sherman. Protein Sequencing and Identifi-
cation Using Mass Spectrometry. Wiley-Interscience, 2000.

[5] Bin Ma, Kaizhoung Zhang, Christopher Hendrie, Chengzhi Liang, Ming Li,
Amanda Doherty-Kirby, and Gilles Lajoie. Peaks: powerful software for
peptide de novo sequencing by tandem mass spectrometry. Rapid Communications
In Mass Spectrometry, 2003.

[6] D. N. Perkins, D. J. C. Pappin, D. M. Creasy, and J. S. Cottrell. Probability
based protein identification by searching sequence databases using mass
spectrometry data. Electrophoresis, 1999.

Back to Contents

Paper Submission Deadlines

ISPD’13 – Int’l Symposium on Physical Design
(co-located with TAU’13)
Lake Tahoe, CA
Mar 24-27, 2013
Deadline: Oct 1, 2012
http://www.ispd.cc

NOCS'13 – Int’l Symposium on Networks-on-Chip
Tempe, AZ
Deadline: Nov 26, 2012 (Abstracts due: Nov 19, 2012)
Apr 21-24, 2013
http://chatha.faculty.asu.edu/nocs2013/

ASYNC'13 – Int’l Symposium on Asynchronous Circuits and Systems
Santa Monica, CA
Deadline: Dec 14, 2012 (Abstracts due: Dec 7, 2012)
May 19-22, 2013
http://asyncsymposium.org

DAC’13 – Design Automation Conference
Austin, TX
Deadline: Dec 3, 2012 (Abstracts due: Nov 27, 2012)
User track deadline: Feb 6, 2013
Jun 2-6, 2013
http://www.dac.com/

TAU’13 – Int’l Workshop on Timing Issues in the Specification and Synthesis of Digital Systems
(co-located with ISPD’13)
Stateline, NV
Deadline: Dec 18, 2012
Mar 27-29, 2013
http://www.tauworkshop.com/

MSE'13 - Microelectronics Systems Education
Austin, TX
Deadline: Jan 15, 2013
Jun 2-3, 2013
http://www.mseconference.org

Back to Contents

Upcoming Conferences and Symposia

VLSI-SoC’12 – Int’l Conference on Very Large Scale Integration and System on Chip
Santa Cruz, CA
Oct 7-12, 2012
http://vlsisoc2012.soe.ucsc.edu/

ESWEEK'12 - Embedded Systems Week (CASES, CODES+ISSS, and EMSOFT)
Tampere, Finland
Oct 7-12, 2012
http://www.esweek.org

Wireless Health’12
San Diego, CA
Oct 22-25, 2012
http://www.wirelesshealth2012.org/

ICCAD’12 – Int’l Conference on Computer-Aided Design
San Jose, CA
Nov 5-8 2012
http://www.iccad.com

HLDVT’12 – Int’l High-Level Design, Validation and Test Workshop
Huntington Beach, CA
Nov 9-10, 2012
http://www.hldvt.com/12/

BIOCAS'12 - Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference
Hsinchu, Taiwan
Nov 28-30, 2012
http://www.biocas2012.org/

MICRO'12 - Int'l Symposium on Microarchitecture
Vancouver, Canada
Dec 1-5, 2012
http://www.microarch.org/micro45/

ICFPT'12 - Int'l Conference on Field-Programmable Technology
Seoul, Korea
Dec 10-12, 2012
http://www.icfpt.org/

ICPADS'12 - Int'l Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems
Singapore, Singapore
Dec 17-19, 2012
http://pdcc.ntu.edu.sg/icpads2012/

HiPC'12 - Int'l Conference on High Performance Computing
Pune, India
Dec 18-21, 2012
http://www.hipc.org/

ISED’12 – Int’l Symposium on Electronic System Design
Kolkata, India
Dec 19-22, 2012
http://ised.seedsnet.org/

VLSI'13 - Int'l Conference on VLSI Design
Pune, India
Jan 5-10, 2013
http://www.vlsidesignconference.org/

HiPEAC'13: Int'l Conference on High Performance Embedded Architectures & Compilers
Berlin, Germany
Jan 21-23, 2013
http://www.hipeac.net/ hipeac2013

ASP-DAC'13 - Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference
Yokohama, Japan
Jan 22-25, 2013
www.aspdac.com/aspdac2013/

ISSCC'13 - Int'l Solid-State Circuits Conference
San Francisco, CA
Feb 17-21, 2012
http://isscc.org/

ISQED'13 - Int'l Symposium on Quality Electronic Design
Santa Clara, CA
Mar 11-13, 2013
http://www.isqed.org/

DATE'13 - Design Automation and Test in Europe
Grenoble, France
Mar 18-22, 2013
http://www.date-conference.com/

ISCAS'13 - Int'l Symposium on Circuits and Systems
Beijing, China
May 19-23, 2013
http://iscas2013.org/

Back to Contents

Upcoming Funding Opportunities

ASEE

Office of Naval Research (ONR) Summer Faculty Research Program
Deadline: December 05, 2012
http://onr.asee.org/

National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship Program
Deadline: December 16, 2012
http://ndseg.asee.org/

Office of Naval Research (ONR) Sabbatical Leave Program
Deadline: Continuous
http://onr.asee.org/

Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
Deadline: Continuous
http://www.asee.org/fellowships/nrl/about.cfm

DOD

Unconventional Processing of Signals for Intelligent Data Exploitation (UPSIDE)
Deadline: October 12, 2012
https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=2350e6d441b35f64e350ecd2711...

Robust Computational Intelligence - AFOSR-BAA-2012-01
Deadline: Continuous
http://www.grants.gov/search/search.do?oppId=88213&mode=VIEW

Systems and Software - AFOSR-BAA-2012-01
Deadline: Continuous
http://www.grants.gov/search/search.do?mode=VIEW&oppId=158973

ERDC BAA - Computational Science and Engineering (ITL-1)
Deadline: Continuous
http://www.mvk.usace.army.mil/contract/docs/BAA.pdf

Advanced Distributed Sensor Technologies - BAA 57-09-06
Deadline: Continuous
http://heron.nrl.navy.mil/contracts/baa/index.htm

Information Management and Decision Architectures (NRL-WIDE BAA-N00173-01)
Deadline: Continuous
http://heron.nrl.navy.mil/contracts/baa/index.htm

High Performance Computing on Massively Parallel Architectures (BAA 64-09-01)
Deadline: Continuous
http://heron.nrl.navy.mil/contracts/baa/index.htm

ASEE-NRL Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
Deadline: N/A
http://hroffice.nrl.navy.mil/jobs/postdoc.htm

DOE

Director's Postdoctoral Fellows
Deadline: Continuous
http://www.lanl.gov/science/postdocs/appointments.shtml

Postdoctoral Appointments
Deadline: N/A
http://www.sandia.gov/careers/postdoc.html

Sabbaticals and Faculty Appointments
Deadline: continuous
http://www.nrel.gov/rpp/sabbaticals.html

McDonnell Foundation

Studying Complex Systems - 21st Century Science Collaborative Activity Awards
Deadline: continuous
http://www.jsmf.org/programs/cs/

NSF

Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS): Core Programs
Deadline: Oct 9 (medium) / Nov 30 (large) / Dec 17 (small), 2012
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13707

Computer and Network Systems (CNS): Core Programs
Deadline: Oct 9 (medium) / Nov 30 (large) / Dec 17 (small), 2012
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=12765

Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF): Core Programs
Deadline: Oct 9 (medium) / Nov 30 (large) / Dec 17 (small), 2012
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503220

CISE Computing Research Infrastructure (CRI)
Deadline: October 23, 2012
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=12810

Communications, Circuits, and Sensing-Systems (CCSS)
Deadline: November 1, 2012
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13381

Energy, Power and Adaptive Systems (EPAS)
Deadline: November 1, 2012
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13380

Communications, Circuits, and Sensing-Systems (CCSS)
Deadline: November 1, 2012
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13381

Expeditions in Computing
Deadline: December 10, 2012
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503169

National Robotics Initiative (NRI)
Deadline: December 11, 2012 (small) / January 23, 2013 (large)
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503641

Core Techniques and Technologies for Advancing Big Data Science & Engineering (BIGDATA)
Deadline: June 13, 2013
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=504767

Research and Evaluation on Education in Science and Engineering (REESE)
Deadline: Continuous
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13667

Back to Contents

Call for participation: ACM SIGDA CADathlon 2012

ACM SIGDA CADathlon 2012
Sunday, November 4
8am-5pm

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 CAD
applications, problem-solving and programming skills, as well as
teamwork.

In its eleventh 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. Travel grant s are provided to qualifying students.The
CADathlon competition consists of six problems in the following areas:

(1) Circuit analysis
(2) Physical design
(3) Logic and behavioral synthesis
(4) System design and analysis
(5) Functional verification
(6) Bio-EDA

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 team's prize is a $2,000 cash award. The second place team's
prize is a $1,000 cash award.

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.

The CADathlon competition is sponsored by ACM/SIGDA and several
Computer and EDA companies. For detailed contest information and
sample problems from last year's competition, please visit the ACM/
SIGDA website at

http://www.sigda.org/programs/cadathlon

IMPORTANT DATES:

October 10 Participation request for submission due
October 15 Notification of acceptance

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

Chair, Jarrod Roy, jarrod.a.roy@gmail.com
Vice Chair, Asst. Prof. Sudeep Pasricha, sudeep@colostate.edu
Vice Chair, Assoc. Prof. Srinivas Katkoori, katkoori@cse.usf.edu
Vice Chair, Sudarshan Banerjee, sudarshan_w@yahoo.com
Vice Chair, Luis Angel D. Bathen, lbathen@gmail.com

Back to Contents

Call for participation: ESWEEK 2012

E M B E D D E D S Y S T E M S W E E K
Tampere, Finland, October 7-12, 2012
www.esweek.org

Embedded Systems Week is an exciting event which brings together conferences,
tutorials, and workshops centered on various aspects of embedded systems
research and development. Leading conferences in the area will take place
at the same time and location, allowing attendees to benefit from a wide
range of topics covered by these conferences and their associated tutorials
and workshops.

One registration, three conferences

Registered attendees will be allowed to attend sessions in the other
conferences and tutorials for free: CASES 2012, CODES+ISS 2012, EMSOFT
2012. Please note that workshops may require separate registration.

Conferences

- International Conference on Compilers, Architecture, and Synthesis for
Embedded Systems, chaired by Vincent Mooney and Rodric Rabbah
- International Conference on Hardware - Software Codesign and System
Synthesis, chaired by Franco Fummi and Naehyuck Chang
- International Conference on Embedded Software, chaired by Florence Maraninchi
and John Regehr

Industrial sessions and panels

•Trends in Automotive Embedded Systems
•Internet-of-Energy - Combining Embedded Computing and Communication for
the Smart Grid
•Research issues in smart phones, notepads and related services
•"Low power high performance computing - How could this trend help embedded
systems technology?"

Keynotes

•Monday: Wireless Innovations for Smartphones. Speaker: Dr. Hannu Kauppinen,
Vice President, Head of Nokia Research Center
•Tuesday: Computing without Processors. Speaker: Prof. Satnam Singh,
Technical Infrastructure division, Google, USA
•Wednesday: A Standards-Based, Fully-Open Software Platform for Smart
Embedded Systems. Speaker: Dr. Jong-Deok Choi, Executive Vice President,
Samsung Electronics, Korea

Tutorials

•Analytical Approaches for Performance Evaluation of Networks-on-Chip
Organizer: Axel Jantsch; Speakers: Abbas Eslami Kiasari, Alan Burns, Axel
Jantsch, Marco Bekooij, Zhonghai Lu
•Embedded Reconfigurable Architectures
Organizer: Stephan Wong; Speakers: Stephan Wong, Luigi Carro, Roberto Giorgi,
Stamatis Kavvadias, Stefanos Kaxiras, Georgios Keramidas, Francesco Papariello,
Claudio Scordino
•Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Architectures - Compilation and Exploration
Organizer: Tom Vander Aa; Speakers: Tom Vander Aa, Panagiotis Theocharis
•Soft Errors: The Hardware-Software Interface
Organizer: Kyoungwoo Lee; Speakers: Kyoungwoo Lee, Reiley Jeyapaul, Aviral
Shrivastava
•Runtime Verification of Real-time Embedded Systems
Organizer: Borzoo Bonakdarpour; Speakers: Borzoo Bonakdarpour, Sebastian
Fischmeister
•Mixed critical system design and analysis
Organizer: Rolf Ernst;Speakers: Rolf Ernst, Alan Burns, Jimmy Le Rhun,
Lothar Thiele

Workshops/Symposia

•CASA 2012: 8th Workshop on Compiler Assisted System-on-chip Assembly ;
Organizer: Aviral Shrivastava
•ESTIMedia 2012: 10th IEEE Symposium on Embedded Systems for Real-Time
Multimedia; Organizers: Jian-Jia Chen , and Maurizio Palesi
•RSP 2012: IEEE International Symposium on Rapid System Prototyping;
Organizers: Fabiano Hessel, Jérôme Hugues and Frédéric Rousseau.
•WSS 2012: Workshop on Software Synthesis; Organizers: Peter Marwedel and
Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli.
•WESE 2012: Workshop on Embedded and Cyber-Physical Systems Education;
Organizers: Peter Marwedel, Jeff Jackson, and Kenneth Ricks.
•EON 2012: Workshop on Optimization of Computing at the Edge of Network;
Organizers: Shahrokh Daijavid, Sumedh Sathaye and Seraphin Calo
•WESS 2012: Workshop on Embedded Systems Security; Organizers: Dimitrios
Serpanos
•MeCoES 2012: Workshop Metamodeling and Code Generation for Embedded Systems;
Organizers: Wolfgang Mueller and Wolfgang Ecker
•MeAOW 2012: Memory Architecture and Organization Workshop; Organizers:
Jason Xue and Nikil Dutt

Co-located Events

SoC 2012: International Symposium on System-on-Chip 2012, October 11-12, 2012.

Registration is now open at www.esweek.org

Contacts: ESWeek General Chairs: - Ahmed Jerraya, CEA, France; Luca Carloni,
Columbia University, USA
ESWeek Local Arrangement Chair: - Jari Nurmi, Tampere University of Technology,
Finland

Back to Contents

Call for papers: ISPD 2013

ACM International Symposium on Physical Design 2013
With a tribute to Professor Yoji Kajitani
http://www.ispd.cc

* IMPORTANT DATES
Submission deadline: October 1, 2012
Acceptance notification: November 14, 2012
Camera-ready paper due: January 16, 2013
Symposium date: March 24 - 27, 2013

Location: To be announced shortly.
(Co-located with TAU, http://www.tauworkshop.com)
Sponsored by ACM SIGDA with Technical Co-sponsorship from IEEE CAS

The International Symposium on Physical Design provides a premier forum
to exchange ideas and promote research on critical areas related to the
physical design of VLSI systems. All aspects of physical design,
including its interactions with architecture, behavioral- and logic-level
synthesis, and back-end performance analysis and verification are within
the scope of the symposium. Target domains include semi-custom and
full-custom IC's, regular fabrics, FPGA's, and
systems-on-chip/systems-in-package. Following its twenty-one predecessors,
the 2013 symposium will highlight key new directions and leading-edge
theoretical and experimental contributions to the field. The ACM Press
will publish accepted papers in the Symposium proceedings. Topics of
interest include but are not limited to:

- Floorplanning and interconnect planning
- Interactions with behavior-level synthesis flows
- Partitioning, placement and routing
- Interactions with logic-level (re-)synthesis flows
- Physical design for manufacturability and yield
- Analysis and management of power dissipation
- Synthesis optimizations within physical design
- Management of design data and constraints
- Estimation and modeling
- New physical design methodologies
- Timing and crosstalk issues in physical design
- New paradigms in physical design
- Special structures for clocking and power networks
- Circuit performance measurements in a PD context
- Physical design for emerging process technologies
- Multithreaded/distributed algorithms in physical design
- Makeover of traditional PD problem formulation for the new technology nodes
and new applications
- Critiques and in-depth analysis of previously published PD algorithms with
new experimental results for better comparison

Continuing the tradition of spirited competition for the previous eight ISPD
contests, a contest will be held in ISPD 2013. Details will be announced on
our website later.

* SUBMISSION OF PAPERS

All papers must be submitted electronically. Details will be posted on the
website http://www.ispd.cc . Potential authors will be required to submit
full-length, original, unpublished papers (a maximum of 8 pages in ACM
conference format) along with an abstract of at most 200 words and contact
author information (name, street/mailing address, telephone/fax, e-mail).
Previously published or papers concurrently submitted for publication to other
conferences/journals will not be considered. If one or more related papers
have been previously published elsewhere or have been concurrently submitted
elsewhere for publication, the authors should clearly state the differences
between these papers and the current submission. All submitted papers will be
under blind reviews, and thus they must not include name(s) or affiliation(s)
of the author(s) anywhere in the manuscripts. Failure to comply with these
requirements will result in automatic rejection.

ISPD will recognize excellent contributions through a Best Paper Award.

* SYMPOSIUM ORGANIZATION

General Chair: Cheng-Kok Koh (Purdue Univ.) [chengkok@purdue.edu]
Steering Committee Chair: Jiang Hu (Texas A&M Univ.) [jianghu@ece.tamu.edu]
Technical Program Chair: Cliff Sze (IBM) [csze@us.ibm.com]
Publications Chair: Azadeh Davoodi (Univ. Wisconsin) [adavoodi@wisc.edu]
Publicity Chair/Webmaster: Evangeline F. Y. Young (Chinese Univ. of Hong Kong)
[fyyoung@cse.cuhk.edu.hk]
Contest Chair: Mustafa Ozdal (Intel) [mustafa.ozdal@intel.com]

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Call for Papers: GLSVLSI 2013

GLSVLSI 2013
Paris, France, May 2-4 2013
http://www.glsvlsi.org/
Sponsored by ACM SIGDA, with Technical Support of IEEE CEDA

The 23rd edition of GLSVLSI will be held in Paris, France and collocated with
the ACM European Computing Research Congress (ECRC), http://ecrc.acm.org.
Original, unpublished papers describing research in the general area of
VLSI are solicited. Both theoretical and experimental research results are
welcome. Proceedings will be published by the ACM and will be available through
the ACM Digital Library. For more information, visit http://www.glsvlsi.org/.

Program Tracks:
> VLSI Design: design of ASICs, microprocessors/micro-architectures, embedded
processors, analog/digital/mixed-signal systems, NoC, interconnects, memories,
and FPGAs.
> VLSI Circuits: analog/digital/mixed-signal circuits, RF and communication
circuits, chaos/neural/fuzzy-logic circuits, high-speed/low-power circuits.
> Computer-Aided Design (CAD): hardware/software co-design, logic and
behavioral synthesis, logic mapping, simulation and formal verification,
layout (partitioning, placement, routing, floorplanning, compaction),
algorithms and complexity analysis
> Low Power and Power Aware Design: circuits, micro-architectural techniques,
thermal estimation and optimization, power estimation methodologies, and
CAD tools
> Testing, Reliability, Fault-Tolerance: digital/analog/mixed-signal testing,
design for testability and reliability, online testing techniques, static
and dynamic defect- and fault-recoverability, and variation-aware design
> Emerging Technologies: nano technology, molecular electronics, quantum
devices, biologically-inspired computing, CNT, SET, RTD, QCA, VLSI aspects
of sensor and sensor networks, and CAD tools for emerging technology devices
and circuits
> Post-CMOS VLSI: evolutionary computing, optical computing, quantum computing,
reversible logic, spin-based computing, biological computation, nanotechnology,
molecular electronics, quantum devices, biologically-inspired computing.
Emphasis should be on the analysis, novel circuits and architectures,
modeling, CAD tools, and design methodologies.

Paper submission deadline: December 15, 2012
Acceptance Notification: February 15, 2013
Camera-Ready Paper Due: March 1, 2013

Paper Submission: Authors are invited to submit full-length (6 pages maximum),
original, unpublished papers along with an abstract of at most 200 words.
To enable blind review, the author list should be omitted from the main
document. Previously published papers or papers currently under review for
other conferences/journals should not be submitted and will not be considered.
Electronic submission in PDF format to the http://www.glsvlsi.org website
is required. Author and contact information (name, street/mailing address,
telephone, fax, e-mail) must be entered during the submission process.

Paper Format: Submissions should be in camera-ready two-column format,
following the ACM proceedings specifications located at:
http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html
and the classification system detailed at: http://www.acm.org/class/1998

Paper Publication and Presenter Registration: Papers will be accepted for
regular or poster presentation at the symposium. Every accepted paper
MUST have at least one author registered to the symposium by the time the
camera-ready paper is submitted; the author is also expected to attend the
symposium and present the paper.

General Chair
Jose L. Ayala - Complutense Univ. of Madrid, Spain

Program Chair
Alex K. Jones - University of Pittsburgh, USA
Patrick Madden - Binghamton University, USA

Proceedings Chair
Ayse Coskun - Boston University, USA

Website Chair
Theocharis Theocharides - University of Cyprus, Cyprus

Steering Committee
David Atienza - EPFL, Switzerland
Iris Bahar - Brown University, USA
Sanjukta Bhanja - University of South Florida, USA
Erik Brunvand - University of Utah, USA
Joseph Cavallaro - Rice University, USA
Fabrizio Lombardi - Northeastern University, USA
Enrico Macii - Politecnico di Torino, Italy
Ken Stevens - University of Utah, USA
Yuan Xie - Penn State University, USA
Tong Zhang - Rensselaer, USA

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Call for Papers: NOCS 2013

April 21-24, 2013
Tempe, Arizona, USA

The International Symposium on Networks-on-Chip (NOCS) is the premier event
dedicated to interdisciplinary research on on-chip and chip-scale communication
technology, architecture, design methods, applications and systems. NOCS brings
together scientists and engineers working on NoC innovations and applications
from inter-related research communities, including computer architecture,
networking, circuits and systems, embedded systems, and design automation.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

NoC architecture and implementation
- Network architecture (topology, routing, arbitration)
- NoC Quality of Service
- Timing, synchronous/asynchronous communication
- NoC reliability issues
- Network interface issues
- NoC design methodologies and tools
- Signaling & circuit design for NoC links
- Physical design of interconnect & NoC

NoC analysis and verification
- Power, energy & thermal issues (at the NoC, un-core and/or system-level)
- Benchmarking & experience with real NoC-based hardware
- Modeling, simulation, and synthesis of NoCs
- Verification, debug & test of NoCs
- Metrics and benchmarks for NoCs

NoC application
- Mapping of applications onto NoCs
- NoC case studies, application-specific NoC design
- NoCs for FPGAs, structured ASICs, CMPs and MPSoCs
- NoC designs for heterogeneous systems, fused CPU-GPU architectures, etc
- Network design for 2.5D & 3D stacked logic and memory

NoC at the un-core and system-level
- Design of memory subsystem (un-core) including memory controllers, caches,
cache coherence protocols & NoCs
- NoC support for memory and cache access
- OS support for NoCs
- Programming models including shared memory, message passing and novel
programming models
- Multi/many-core workload characterization & evaluation
- Optical, RF, & emerging technologies for on-chip/inpackage interconnects
- Issues related to large-scale systems (datacenters, supercomputers) with
NoC-based systems as building blocks

Electronic paper submission requires a full paper, up to 8 double-column IEEE
format pages, including figures and references. The program committee in a
double-blind review process will evaluate papers based on scientific merit,
innovation, relevance, and presentation. Submitted papers must describe original
work that has not been published before or is under review by another conference
at the same time. Each submission will be checked for any significant similarity
to previously published works or for simultaneous submission to other archival
venues, and such papers will be rejected. Furthermore, NOCS will notify the
technical chair of the venue where the duplicate was submitted. Please see the
paper submission instructions for details.

Proposals for tutorials, special sessions, and panels are also invited. Please
see the detailed submission instructions for paper, tutorial, special sessions,
and panel proposals at the submission page. A special section related to the
theme of the conference will be organized in one of the IEEE journals.

Abstract registration deadline
Nov 19, 2012
Full paper submission deadline
Nov 26, 2012
Proposals for tutorials, special sessions and panels Jan 11, 2013
Notification of acceptance
Feb 1, 2013
Final version due
Mar 1, 2013

Organizing Committee
General Co-Chairs:
Karam S. Chatha, Arizona State University, USA
Chita R. Das, Penn State University, USA
Finance Chair:
Sudeep Pasricha, Colorado State, USA
Registration Chair:
Mohammed Al Faruque, Siemens, USA
Publicity Chair:
Carole Jean Wu, Arizona State University, USA
Program Co-Chairs:
John Bainbridge, Sonics Inc., USA
Natalie Enright Jerger, University of Toronto, CA
Publications Chair:
Paul Gratz, Texas A&M, USA
Tutorials/Demo Chair
Zhonghai Lu, KTH, Sweden
Industrial Chair
Umit Ogras, Intel, USA

Contact Information
Karam Chatha, kchatha@asu.edu
John Bainbridge, jbainbridge@ieee.org
Chita Das, das@cse.psu.edu
Natalie Enright Jerger, enright@eecg.toronto.edu

Back to Contents

Notice of Publication: Special Issue of JECE on ESL Design Methodology

A special issue of Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering on ESL Design
Methodology has just been published. It is open access, and all the
articles can
be accessed at:

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jece/si/728460/

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Notice to Authors

Notice to Authors By submitting your article for distribution in this Special Interest Group publication, you hereby grant to ACM the following non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide rights: to publish in print on condition of acceptance by the editor; to digitize and post your article in the electronic version of this publication; to include the article in the ACM Digital Library and in any Digital Library related services; and to allow users to make a personal copy of the article for noncommercial, educational or research purposes. However, as a contributing author, you retain copyright to your article and ACM will refer requests for republication directly to you.

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