With Strong Focus on Autonomous Intelligence, 32nd Edition of VLSI Design Conference Concluded Successfully
The 32nd International Conference on VLSI Design and 18th International Conference on Embedded systems concluded recently at New Delhi. The conference witnessed more than 1000 participants from Industry, Government and academia.
In an effort to promote Indian talent, NXP Semiconductors drove a design contest based on NXP Semiconductors Modular IoT Gateway Reference Design Kit featuring NXP’s leading i.MX6 processor. The contest witnessed participation from numerous engineers, teams comprising of engineers from industry and students from university were shortlisted to go ahead in converting their ideas into application solutions using the NXP Gateway kits. The conference also hosted Hackathon sponsored by Cadence on their Tensilica AI processor was attended by teams from several universities across India.
Talking about the event, Mr. Vishwani Agrawal Steering Committee Chair - VLSID, said, ‘India has a huge bank of evolving talent in the field of engineering, and we strongly believe that India has a potential to transform how the industries across the world functions. Through the Design Contest and Hackathon, we attempted to unlock the full creative potential of the budding engineers and provide them with a platform to put across their innovative ideas to make the world a better place with cutting edge technologies.’ Further, to discuss the challenges faced by women in the field of engineering, the conference for the first time dedicated second day of the conference as ‘Women in Engineering (WIE) Day’ sponsored by Intel. WIE forum was chaired by Ms. Ashwini Khandekar and Ms Seema Naswa. Eminent women from the industry like Pamela Kumar, Viji Ranganna, Prof. Basabi Bhaumik, Krishna Paul, V. Bharati, Dr. Lipika Dey, Ms. Prof. Shobha Vasudevan, Reenee Raizada Tayal, Priya G., and Sumedha Limaye, took part in the discussion and shared very strong opinions around how the challenges for women in engineering can be addressed.
On the occasion, Mr. Sanjay Gupta, Executive Chair VLSID 2019 and VP, NXP Semiconductors, India said, ‘This is a golden page in history of VLSI Conference in India. It is enthralling to see such a dream we all saw 2 years ago come to reality with seamless execution of 32nd International VLSI & Embedded Systems conference – 2019. This was only possible with the support of the passionate members of the VLSID 2019 chair and organizing committee who displayed excellent team work. I feel honoured to see the impact and grandeur we could put up in front of global experts, industry and academia leaders, government agencies. Most importantly, we were able to positively influence the mindset of our young engineering brains in the country to go for Innovation driven excellence in semiconductor product design and make India proud.’
Mr. Preet Yadav, General Chair VLSID 2019 and Analog Practice Head, Wipro Limited, said, ‘This edition of VLSID Conference saw some unique deliberations by the maestros of the industry. We are encouraged with the success of this endeavour and the support that we have received from our partners, sponsors and the community at large. I strongly believe that conferences like these will also boost confidence in students and result in higher quality of products in India and abroad.'
Mr. Preeti Ranjan Panda, General Chair VLSID 2019 and Professor, IIT-Delhi, said, “The successful completion of the event continued a glorious tradition into its 32nd year. The participants were excited at the array of opportunities to learn from global leaders about the different directions in which this fast-moving technology is evolving, present futuristic research ideas at the various forums, and exchange notes with colleagues pushing the technology envelope in academia and industry around the world.”
Additionally, the event hosted sessions on trending topics like, The Autonomous Automotive Robustness Duo: Challenges and Practice in Functional Safety and Security, designing in the Next Generation IoTAI Ecosystem, Vision based Autonomous Systems, Hardware Security of Embedded Systems and IoT Environment, IoT for Smarter Healthcare: From Device to Architecture, Applications and Analytics and many more.
The conference also included several visionary keynotes from Industry, Academia and Research. Meindert Van Den Beld, NXP Semiconductors focused on the four pillars of the Internet of Things – sensing, connectivity, processing and safety & security. Srini Maddali, Qualcomm discussed next generation technology enablers for 5G regime. Sanjay Gupta, NXP Semiconductors showcased NextGen Innovations Opportunities where India can build an edge. Prof. Nikil Dutt, University of California at Irvine talked about self-awareness in computing. Prof Vijay Narayanan discussed the motivation and mechanisms for inmemory computing. Dheemanth Nagaraj, Intel discussed the efforts in the industry to adapt computing systems and architectures to the data-centric future. Alok Jain, Cadence Design Systems stressed on smarter verification techniques. Prof. Kaushik Roy, Purdue University pointed out that the entire computing infrastructure could be potentially re-engineered in a brain-inspired computing methodology. Prof. Rajesh Gupta, University of California, discussed on infrastructure for new generation of cyber-physical systems. Jaswinder Ahuja in his banquet address focused on enabling the data driven economy for the fast-changing world.
Many interesting panel discussions were hosted during the conference discussing the challenges and futuristic opportunities to overcome these challenges and were also attended by, Puneet Singh, Qualcomm, Sidhartha Mohanty, Intel, Dr. Ramachandra Budihal, Wipro Limited, M. Balakrishnan, IIT Delhi, David Yeh, Semiconductor Research Corporation, Chandra Shekhar Vice Chancellor, Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research, Pradip Bose, IBM, Prof. Vijaykrishnan Narayanan, Pennsylvania State University. Amit Verma, DSCI, Rajamohan Varambally, STMicroelectronics, Amardeep Punhani, NXP Semiconductors, Amit Sharma, DRDO.
Industry leaders such as NXP Semiconductors, Qualcomm, Intel, Mentor Graphics, Cadence system, STMicroelectronics, WD participated and showcased solutions on cutting edge technologies that will help paving the way for digital transformation and opening a new world of opportunities for both, industry and academia.
This five-day long conference was the ‘First Go Green’ VLSID conference in the history of VLSI Design conferences which saw over 100 sessions covering 200+ presentation on cutting edge technologies by the industry leader across 200 global organizations. The fellowship program of this edition of the conference was a big success, as for the first time there were fellowship participants from each state of India. India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA), Data Security Council of India (DSCI), IIT Delhi, IIIT Delhi were collaboration partners in the conference. Ten number of IEEE and ACM societies technically co-sponsored this year’s conference.
Nagi Naganathan, Steering Committee Member, VLSI Design Conference