2016 International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design
March 15-16, 2016, Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA
Technical Sponsors: IEEE CASS, IEEE EDS, IEEE RS
Introduction
ISQED is the premier interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary electronic design conference aimed at bridging the gap among electronic/semiconductor ecosystem members and providing electronic design tools, integrated circuit techniques, semiconductor manufacturing technologies, packaging technologies, and assembly and test methodologies to achieve design quality. The 17th ISQED continued to provide and foster a unique opportunity to participants to interact and engage in cutting edge tutorials, presentations, and panel and plenary sessions. This report summarizes the conference activities, highlights the achievements, and provides a recommendation for the following years.
Four embedded tutorials provided in-depth studies on two of the most popular emerging fields in the semiconductor industry: the Internet of Things (IoT) and Neuromorphic Computing. The two-day technical program with three parallel sessions included around 100 papers highlighting the latest trends in electronic circuit and system design & automation, test, verification, sensors, security, semiconductor technologies, and cognitive computing. The number of submitted papers was about 10% lower than 2015, but was in line with the 5-year average for the conference submissions (going back to 2012). A number of invited sessions were created for this year’s conference, whose topics ranged from IoT design concepts, to on-chip Machine Learning, to enabling the 5nm technology node. A new track on Cognitive Computing and Machine Learning was introduced to bring forth the technical innovations and trends in electronic design in this ever growing field, which simultaneously challenges and complements existing computing paradigms.
Sponsors and Exhibitors
Technical sponsors were IEEE, IEEE Electron Devices Society, IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, and the IEEE Reliability Society. Corporate sponsors were Synopsys, Innovotek, and the Silicon Valley Polytechnic Institute. Sponsors were recognized through announcements and slide presentations during the plenary session and the luncheon awards on March 15.
Plenary Session, Awards, and Keynotes
Plenary sessions were organized around the themes of the “Internet of Things” and “Hardware Security and Trust.” Two distinguished speakers from industry and academia discussed breakthroughs and future trends in the era of IoT, with a focus on security vulnerabilities, attacks, and solutions for IoT.
The conference opened with Plenary Session 1P on March 15. Professor Mark M. Tehranipoor, currently the Intel Charles E. Young Professor in Cybersecurity in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Florida, presented a keynote talk entitled, “New Frontiers in Hardware Security and Trust.” Navraj Nandra, Senior Director of Interface IP at Synopsys, presented a keynote talk entitled, “Avoiding the Dark Side of the Cloud Using Secure and Reliable IoT Devices.” The plenary session in the morning was attended by approximately 60 people.
On March 15, luncheon awards and a luncheon panel were held at noon. The conference organizing committee and technical program committee members were recognized during the awards ceremony. Peter Wright, 2016 General Chair, was awarded the ISQED Fellowship. Two papers (listed in the ISQED 2016 Program Booklet) were awarded the Best Paper Award. The luncheon panel discussed hardware and system security in the IoT era, and included members from Cisco, Intel, Intrinsic-ID, Mentor Graphics, NXP, and University of Florida.
Technical Sessions and Embedded Tutorials
There were three sets of technical sessions on each day of March 15 and 16; one in the morning and two in the afternoon. Each set of technical sessions consisted of three parallel breakout sessions for oral presentations. The total number of oral presentations was 71, which included a number of invited talks. In addition, poster presentations were held on March 15. The poster sessions had a peak audience of ~50 people. The embedded tutorial presentations took place on March 15 and 16 with four experts from industry and academia focusing on IoT and Neuromorphic Computing. Approximately 30 people attended the embedded tutorials on the first day (which was in parallel with one of the technical sessions), and around 60 people attended the embedded tutorials on the second day (which was a standalone session). Please see the conference booklet for technical sessions’ titles, a list of papers presented, and tutorial presentation titles and speakers.
Recommendation for Next Year
The tutorial attendance was much higher compared to the previous year, especially when the tutorials didn’t have any technical sessions overlapping with them. The committee recommends continuing the “embedded” aspect of the tutorials in the program, but keeping them isolated in the program to encourage all conference attendees to attend the tutorial sessions. Merging the tutorials into the technical program, along with careful selection of the topics and speakers should keep tutorial attendance at acceptable levels. This year, the conference dates unfortunately overlapped with another large, international conference: Design, Automation, and Test in Europe (DATE). The committee recommends moving the conference dates back to the beginning of March so that it does not conflict with another large conference, which impacted the overall attendance of the conference and its participants.
We thank all of our sponsors for their support and participants for an outstanding conference in 2016.
Brian T. Cline, TPC Co-Chair, ISQED 2016