Evolving EDA Beyond its E-Roots:
An Overview
(invited paper)
Andrew B. Kahng†‡ and Farinaz Koushanfar†∗
†ECE
and ‡CSE Depts., UC San Diego
*ECE Dept., Rice University
{abk,fkoushanfar}@ucsd.edu
Outline
• Motivation, challenges, and our story
• Study groups overview
– Group I: Systemization of prior efforts
– Group II: Metrics of DA research impact
– Group III: Vision for the EDA field
• Research gap analysis
• The 2015 DA perspective challenge
• Looking forward
Motivation
• Electronic design automation (EDA)
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is an engineering success story
has mainly focused on supporting cost scaling, i.e., “More Moore”
one of the first truly inter-disciplinary fields
has reached a mature state as semiconductors also matured
is witnessing a diminished interest among ECE and CS students
• Urgent to revisit how the EDA field will evolve & grow
• Healthy growth requires exciting new directions as well as a
steady supply of new experts trained at the graduate level
Challenges
• How can the EDA paradigms and methodologies be
leveraged for DA in other, emerging domains to solve
standing real-world problems?
• EDA researchers actively contribute to other fields’ DA
• But… evolution and growth as a community requires a
more systematic, coherent effort – as well as vision
• How can EDA systematically “move beyond its E-roots”?
• To address the challenges, we have formed a recent
initiative of the IEEE Council on Electronic Design
Automation (CEDA)
Our story
• Two seeds of this initiative:
– Series of CCC workshops on extreme-scale design automation
– CANDE (ComputerAided Network DEsign) committee (since 1972)
• Redirecting CANDE under CEDA president-elect, Dr.
Shishpal Rawat, focusing on new initiatives/ activities
• Our team (organized into three study groups):
– Group I: Farinaz Koushanfar, Gang Qu, Zhiru Zhang
– Group II: Andrew B. Kahng, Gi-Joon Nam, David Pan
– Group III: Deming Chen, Priyank Kalla, Subhasish Mitra, Steven
Levitan, Miodrag Potkonjak
Study Groups Overview
• Group I: Systemization of prior efforts
– Summarized & analyzed: (i) Recent roadmaps; (ii) NSF EDA
Expedition grants; and (iii) SRC focused research centers
• Group II: Metrics of DA research impact
– Analysis of research outputs, leveraged funding, industry and
publication data with modern text mining
• Group III: Vision for the EDA field
– Focusing on new opportunities inspired by technologies and
applications, and real-world problems
• More details in this session talks and papers[1][2][3]
[1] Koushanfar, Mirhoseini, Qu, Zhang, "DA Systemization of Knowledge: A Catalog of Prior Forward-Looking
Initiatives (invited paper)", ICCAD 2015.
[2] Kahng, Luo, Nam, Nath, Pan, Robins, " Toward Metrics of Design Automation Research Impact (invited
paper)", ICCAD 2015.
[3] Potkonjak, Chen, Kalla, Levitan, “DA Vision 2015: From Here to Eternity (invited paper)", ICCAD 2015.
RESEARCH GAP ANALYSIS
Research gap analysis (1/2)
• SRC studies to determine the magnitude of research and
world-wide “research gap”
– Research needs derived from ITRS technology requirements in
the 2001 and 2003 studies
– Massive funding gaps identified in studies
Estimated Worldwide annual research investment to support 2008-14 needs
Research gap analysis (2/2)
• 2001 Recommendations for addressing research gap
– The US semiconductor industry must consider increasing $
for long-term horizon ITRS research
– SRC and MARCO must explore options to attract foreign
semiconductor companies as full members
– SRC and MARCO explore collaborations w foreign consortia
– SRC needs better coordination with US government
semiconductor related funding programs
• Many of the recommendations and conclusions of
the analysis seem to be timely even today!
DA PERSPECTIVE CHALLENGE 2015
DA perspective challenge 2015 (1/2)
• Submitters of the challenge asked to suggest longterm problems and their challenges:
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What is the long-term problem
Why is the problem important and challenging?
What is the state-of-the-art?
What is the problem’s relevance to existing DA tools and
methods? How can DA help in addressing the challenges?
– What knowledge, skills, and/or tools needed for addressing?
– Is the problem interdisciplinary, requiring expertise other
than DA?
– What are the broader impacts?
DA perspective challenge 2015 (2/2)
• 30 submissions, 13 invited to the workshop @DAC’15
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3-minutes talks to a panel of 6 academic/industrial judges
1st prize: Huang&Cheng (UCSB) - DA of flexible electronics
2nd prize: Chen&Li (Penn State) - DA for neuromorphic
3rd prize: Chang (KAIST) - Energy optimization for EVs
Audience favorite: (U of Calgary) DA of energy systems
Honorable mentions: (IBM Research) DA for networks of
autonomous vehicles; (MIT) DA for trusted hardware
• The prize winners will be participating in our panel
LOOKING FORWARD
Looking forward
• EDA has been successful as a field, but has reached a
mature state
• Growing beyond our E-roots requires systematic
community effort and vision
• Report on our recent CEDA initiative and efforts of 3
study groups
• Research gap analysis
• DA perspective challenge 2015:
– Input from the community about their XEDA vision
• Need your help in moving forward!
Thank you!
• Questions?
• {abk,fkoushanfar}@ucsd.edu