Minutes of the IFIP Working Group 10.5 Meeting

Darmstadt, Lufthansa Bildungszentrum Seeheim, November 30^th, 2003

Present : D.Borrione, C.Delgado-Kloos, H.Eveking, N.Fristacky, M.Glesner, T.Margaria, A.Pawlak, F.Rammig, R.Reis, L.M.Silveira, F.Wagner

Apologies : E.Aas, K.Choi, J.Damore, J.Darringer, K.-H.Diener, N.Dutt, M.Edwards, M.Imai, A.Jerraya, S.Johnson, J.-Y.Jou, O.Koufopavlou, G.Milne, W.Nebel, H.Ofek, P.Paulin, W.Rosenstiel, D.Sciutto, A.Stempkovsky, R.Waxman

Invited : L.Indrusiak, V.Mooney I

1. Report on the VLSI-SoC’2003 conference

On behalf of M.Glesner, the general chair of the VLSI-SoC’2003 conference, L.Indrusiak (TU Darmstadt) gave a report on the organization of the conference, which will be held in Darmstadt, from December 1^st to 3^rd. A total of 148 papers have been submitted, and 58 have been selected for oral presentations and 14 for poster presentations. Around 120 attendees are expected. The conference is organized in cooperation with ACM SIGDA and has 4 industrial sponsors. The PhD forum selected 18 presentations, from which 9 are being funded by TC 10.

2. Report on the EDUTECH workshop

C.Delgado-Kloos gave a report on the organization of the EDUTECH workshop, which will be held in Toulouse, France, together with the IFIP World Computer Congress (WCC), in August 2004. The workshop will be organized in cooperation with WG 3.6 on Distance Education. The workshop has been officially approved by the WCC organizing committee this week. The Programme Committee gathers 6 members from WG 10.5, 5 members from WG 3.6, 1 member from WG 3.3, and 4 other members. Money will be asked to TC 10 for publicity, since the workshop has not been included in the official WCC booklet, because of the late approval. Publisher will be Kluwer, which is asking for 75 books with at least 160 pages. Some money from TC 10 may be needed if not all the 75 books are sold. Although WCC workshops are 1-day events, EDUTECH will try to span two days (probably the last two days of WCC, avoiding conflict with DIPES, which covers the first three days).

3. Report on the Workshop on Frontiers in Automotive Electronics

T.Margaria gave a report on the Workshop on Frontiers in Automotive Electronics, which was held as a technical activity of this meeting. The workshop consisted of one invited talk and 3 contributed presentations, which brought very different perspectives, followed by a very lively discussion. The workshop attracted only 7 members of the WG as well as other 8 participants.

4. Report on CHARME’03 and SIG-CHARME

T.Margaria, on behalf of S.Johnson, gave a report on the CHARME’03 conference, which was held in L’Aquila, Italy, from October 21^st to 24^th. There were 63 submissions, with 24 full papers and 8 short papers accepted. The conference had a very good quality, but a low attendance (50 people).

SIG-CHARME met during the conference. Next CHARME conference will be in Saarbrücken, Germany, in 2005. Co-chairs will be Wolfgang Paul and Dominique Borrione. Parallel workshops shall be organized, e.g. on SoC verification, as well as hands-on labs. The organizers expect to find a good balancing between industry and academia and to attract young researchers, e.g. through a PhD forum.

5. Report from TC 10

F.Rammig, TC 10 chair, reported on the TC 10 budget. TC 10 must spend around 10.000 euros annually and should earn a similar amount. This amount must be distributed among the 3 active WG’s of TC 10 (10.3, 10.4, 10.5). Since most of the TC 10 earning comes from events (75%), it is expected that the WG 10.5 related conferences (VLSI-SoC, DIPES, and CHARME) always give positive financial results.

F,Rammig also reported on a new SIG on Computer-Aided Inventing, created in the scope of TC 5 (Computer Applications in Technology). The SIG proponents invite all interested parties to participate in this new SIG.

6. Proposal of a new event — ISoLA

T.Margaria presented, on behalf of SIG-CHARME, a proposal for a new event, entitled International Symposium on Leveraging Lean Applications of Formal Methods (ISoLA). It is planned for October or November 2004 and will be held in Cyprus. Local organizers are already committed. The event will be co-sponsored by IEEE TTTC, ACM, IFIP WG 10.5, and eventually other societies. The symposium will address applications of formal methods in systems and engineering, covering also topics that are outside the scope of WG 10.5. The WG approved the event, although its formal approval by SIG-CHARME is still pending.

7. Summer school

T.Margaria also reported that SIG-CHARME intends to organize a summer school, which will be application-oriented and result on a book mainly targeted towards students. There is no formal proposal yet. Funds will be asked to TC 10 for supporting the participation of students.

8. VLSI-SoC’2005

A preliminary Call for Papers for the 2005 edition of VLSI-SoC has been presented by R.Reis, chair of the VLSI-SoC steering committee. The event will be organized by the Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Perth, Australia. WG members expressed their concern regarding the planned date for the conference, from December 12^th to 14^th, since this is too close to Christmas and holidays and could lower the attendance. R.Reis will contact the local organizers to discuss this subject.

9. VLSI-SoC’2007

Vincent Mooney III (Georgia Tech), program chair of VLSI-SoC’2003, presented an initial proposal to host the 2007 edition of VLSI-SoC in Atlanta, USA. The WG gave its initial approval and will wait for a formal proposal.

10. SBCCI’2004

R.Reis distributed the Call for Papers of SBCCI’04 — 17^th Symposium on Integrated Circuits and Systems Design, to be held in Porto de Galinhas, Brazil, in September 2004. The event is organized by the Brazilian Computer Society and Brazilian Microelectronics Society and is co-sponsored by WG 10.5. WG members are encouraged to submit papers to this symposium, whose proceedings are published by the IEEE Computer Society Press.

11. ADL workshop

R.Reis reported that the IFIP World Computer Congress approved the realization of a workshop on Architectural Description Languages as one of its parallel workshops. By looking at the proposal, the WG could not identify researchers that work close to its members. Maybe N.Dutt could be interested in approaching the organizers of this workshop.

12. Membership

F.Wagner reported that the WG has many members that do not participate actively in WG activities, do not show up in meetings, and do not send even apologies for that. It has been decided that these members must be formally contacted and asked whether they would like to become active or to resign. New members, with new ideas, are sought.

13. Next meeting

Next meeting will be held in Toulouse, France, together with the DIPES conference and the EDUTECH workshop, both part of the IFIP World Computer Congress, to be held from August 22^nd to 27^th 2004. Since the WG members will be already involved with technical activities in the context both of DIPES and EDUTECH, it has been decided that this meeting will not include a technical workshop of the Frontiers series.

14. Election of new officers

The three-year term of the current WG 10.5 officers is ending next March. Therefore, F.Wagner asked the WG members to consider nominations for the new term. A formal election should take place during the next meeting in Toulouse, in August 2004.