34th International Conference on VLSI Design and 20th International Conference
on Embedded Design Held Virtually with Unimaginable Success
The 34th International Conference on VLSI Design and The 20th International Conference on Embedded Systems (VLSID-2021) was held virtually from February 20 – 24, 2021 due to COVID19 pandemic and was organized jointly by VLSI Society of India (VSI) in association with Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IIT Guwahati) and Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IIT Roorkee). This is one of main events in India in the field of VLSI design, which bring together all the stakeholders that includes academia, industry, R&D houses and policy makers in the field of hardware and software system design, verification, test, EDA tools development, and manufacturing of electronic circuits.
Technological advancement has made it possible to develop systems that are much more complex than previously anticipated. The increasing demand of employing multiple features and facilities in a single system has made the job of VLSI chip designers difficult. Since the current technology is used to verify next generation technology, it is imperative to make current Electrical Design Automation (EDA) tools intelligent enough to support this demand. The transformation is difficult to achieve with the reducing feature size and the advancement of next generation technology. Even if the changes are made to meet the demand, performance issue becomes critical while preserving the accuracy of solution. The world is demanding artificial intelligence (AI) to the part of every system. From space-tech, defence, consumer electronics to smart agriculture, AI has become an essential component. This has made task of VLSI circuit designers, EDA experts, and process engineers more challenging. Thus, the endeavour is to find a suitable solution advanced enough to cater the needs in the best possible manner. This has enabled scientific community and industrial section worldwide to explore domains like quantum computing, sub-5nm novel devices etc. to meet the desired objectives.
In order to address the issue, the theme of 34th International Conference on VLSI Design & the 20th International Conference on Embedded Systems is chosen as “From the transistor to cyber-physical systems for solving societal challenges”, which not only aims to emphasize the potential of the VLSI community to find multidisciplinary solutions for the societal and engineering challenges of our times but also enables us to create a suitable platform for the technological advancements in future too.
This six-day event consisted of keynotes, panel discussions, regular papers, tutorials, design contests, industry and student research forums. The conference is complemented by a virtual exhibition showing the state-of-the-art in system design, software tools and techniques. The conference had created a virtual platform for the delegates to interact with all the stakeholders in the electronic system design and automation domain.
In this conference, a total of 230 submissions were received, which were reviewed by 105 Technical Program Committee Members (from multiple countries across the world), and a total 597 reviews were collected. Finally, 56 papers were presented in 18 different tracks during the conference along with 15 keynote talks from various fields of VLSI and embedded systems covering both academia and industry. The conference vision talk was delivered by Dr. V. K. SARASWAT (Member, NITI Aayog, India) followed by keynote talks by ANAND RAMAMOORTHY (Managing Director, Micron), RAVISHANKAR KUPPUSWAMY (Corporate Vice President, Intel Data Platforms Group / General Manager of Custom Logic Engineering, Intel), PHILIPPE MAGARSHACK (Group VP - Strategy, Technology, and Systems Architecture, Microcontrollers and Digital IC's Group, STMicroelectronics), PAUL CUNNINGHAM (Corporate Vice President & General Manager - System Verification Group, Cadence Design Systems), ANIRBAN BANDYOPADHYAY (Senior Director & Head of Strategic Applications, Mobility & Wireless Infrastructure Business Unit, Globalfoundries), SAID HAMDIOUI (Chair Professor, Head of the department of Quantum & Computer Engineering, Delft University of Technology), Prof. UMESH K. MISHRA (Donald W. Whittier Professor of ECE, UC Santa Barbara, Distinguished Professor University of California; Chairman and CTO, Transphorm Inc.), SUMAN DATTA (Stinson Professor of Nanotechnology, Department of Electrical Engineering Director, ASCENT, University of Notre Dame), WILLIAM J. DALLY (Chief Scientist and Senior Vice President of Research, NVIDIA and Adjunct Professor of EE and CS, Stanford University), RAMINE ROANE (VP Software & AI Solutions Marketing, Xilinx), RUCHIR DIXIT (Country Manager, Siemens EDA, India), VENKATA SUDHAKAR SIMHADRI (MD and CEO, MosChip), MASSIMO ALIOTO (Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore), SRINIVAS KANTHETI (Product Line Director, Automotive Group, Analog Devices). These sessions were attended by more than 800 attendees, which itself indicates success of this event.
Three panel discussions were also organized on the various themes. First panel discussion was on “Decoding Semiconductor landscape of 2030”, in which Raj Kumar (Infineon Technologies), Thomas Ernst (CEA LETI), Satya Gupta (ISEA and VSI) and Dinesh Sharma (Prof, IIT Bombay) participated. In the second panel discussion, “Self-Reliance in Semiconductor for AI”, Sanjay Churiwala (Xilinx), Sambit Sahu (Intel), Koushik Ragavan (Micron), Subhasish Mitra (Stanford University) and Boris Murmann (Stanford University) shared their views. The third panel discussion on “Changing paradigm of VLSI education in India” was attended by Sanjay Gupta (NxP Semiconductors), Anku Jain (MediaTek), Ajit Kumar Chaturvedi (IIT Roorkee), V. Ramgopal Rao (IIT Delhi) and Abhay Karandikar (IIT Kanpur). In all these panel discussion various issues and their possible solutions were brainstormed.
The industry form and student research forum were also conducted virtually, cash prizes in various categories were announced. Finally, conference was concluded successfully having more than 1600 participants and 20 companies participated in it. In his closing remarks, Sudeb Dasgupta, General Chair - VLSI2021 Conference said, “Even though it was a virtual conference, the overwhelming participation by academia, industries and research laboratories worldwide made it a great success. Not only new ideas and solutions to the existing problems were discussed, but also a commitment to make this world better by providing clean and green technology was also observed in the present as well as next generation. We welcome this decade with a new energy with VLSI2021 even in COVID19 pandemic by bringing together experts, leaders and innovators at a common platform to share their knowledge and to nurture the future”. Gaurav Trivedi, General Chair - VLSI2021 Conference added, “VLSI Design is not only the flagship conference of VLSI Society of India but also is the biggest conference in this nation in the area of VLSI. This is a place, where experts from all the domains of VLSI meet and discuss their problems and forget collaborations. Many success stories in the area of VLSI in the last many years started at VLSI Design itself. This conference is an ideal platform to bring right kind of people together to launch any initiative towards making India self-reliant in the area of VLSI design, technology and tools and to breed innovations by nurturing talent”. VLSI Design team is now working enthusiastically with renewed energy to host next edition of the conference in Hyderabad, India in the month of January 2022.
Gaurav Trivedi and Sudeb Dasgupta, General Co-Chairs, VLSI Design Conference 2021