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IFIP Working Group 10.5 Minutes Meeting

 

Madrid, 28/9/2010(6 PM-8 PM)VLSI-SOC 2010

http://www.vlsi-soc.com/

 

 

Attendees : Ricardo Reis, David Atienza, Michel Robert, Dominique Borrione, Salvador Mir, Eugenio Vilar, Luis Miguel Silveira, Manfred glesner, Luc Claesen, Jose L. Ayala, Fernando Rincon, Alex Orailoglu, Chi-Ying Tsui, Nick Dutt (but cannot attend due to his keynote presentation)

 

Apologies : Flavio Rech Wagner, Donatella Sciuto, Dimitrios Soudris , Osamu Karatsu, Juergen Becker, Ian O'connor, Franz Rammig,

 

 

The minutes are complemented by several slide presentations used during the meeting, which are attached as a separate document. Contents of the slide presentation are not necessarily repeated in the minutes.

 

 

- Welcome/Participants,  Approval of Agenda, Updated information on IFIP TC 10

(Michel Robert)

 

- Proposal for VLSI-SoC 2013, Alex Orailoglu

(see attach subfile from Alex)

 

Istambul, probably in a hotel (difficult to do at university which are in session)

General Co-Chairs:
- Luis Miguel Silveira, INESC ID/IST, PT

- Fatih Ugurdag, Ozyegin University, Istanbul, Turkey

Program Co-Chairs:
- Alex Orailoglu, UC San Diego, US

- Luigi Carro, UFRGS, Brasil

 

Luis Miguel Silveira remarked that he is supportive of the proposal, but will not be at the location so cannot handle any local issues. That will have to be handled by Fatih. Eugenio Vilar mentioned that it is very important that clear responsabilities be attributed. Luc Claesen also stressed this point. Salvador Mir has some issues about the fact that few people in the proposal are involved with the conference as of now and this has to change. The chairs, particularly the Program Chairs must be involved with the conference as of now. As a suggestion from Luc Claesen, Luis Miguel Silveira suggested that perhaps a role of General Vice-Chair might be more appropriate as it clarifies responsabilities.

 

 

- Update on VLSI-SoC 2012 by Ricardo Reis at the request of Matthew Guthaus.

(see attach subfile from Matthew)

 

Discussion of proposed dates

Matthew proposed either Sept. 30-Oct 1 or Oct. 7-10.

Discussion on locations/hotels (prices too expensive)

Three choices with varying per night prices; these are hotels that can handle the conference

What about other lower price options for stay (specially students); are these at walking distance? This is an important concern

Discussion about organizing committee

There are questions about limited number of local people involved. Three program chairs seems excessive and only one has been involved with the conference. Need to guarantee more proximity to the conference, be at least a topic chair at previous conferences. Alex also suggests that they should have experience in technical program committees at other conferences.

 

The Steering Committee will take notice of the many issues raised, will discuss them with Matthew and make sure that some of the questions raised are addressed. Report will be given at the next meeting

 

 

- Update on VLSI-SoC 2011 by Chi-Ying Tsui

(see attach subfile from Chi-Ying Tsui)

 

Organizing Committee

Location in Kowloon, Grand Plaza hotels

Nearby hotels as options, $120-$150 price range

Registration fees, generally similar to this years

Budget, preliminary

80 papers, plus local people, perhaps 120

Assumes one registration per paper

Sponsors; possibility of setting up specific deals (bulk deals) for companies; not in budget right now)

Expensesseem reasonable but several assumptions will have to be revisited at later times

Call for papers already out in many places

Web page already up; official name to link here soon.

Note : Communication for possible grants from IFIP for emerging countries has to be improved. The number of TPC members coming to the conference is a key issue.

 

 

- Update/Summary for VLSI-SoC 2010 by David Atienza

(see attach subfile from David)

 

Organizing Committee

PhD Forum, there were issues and notes which will be available to improve in future editions of the conference. David should send this info to the Steering Committee.

Number of Topics

- Number of TPC members; this is an important issue to consider; the number is quite large and several did not contribute much; we need some set of rules to bring people and take people out of the TPC

- Luc Claesen mentions that it is a quite large group but includes very few members of the WG, which is alienating to the WG members. Apparently they were invited but some may have not received the e-mails. There is a pressing need to check that such e-mails are being delivered. It is important to involve as many WG members as possible.

- The number of TPC members coming to the conference is also an issue: it is quite low. We need to make sure that this trend is reversed.

- Papers: 199 papers (including regular papers, special sessions and PhD forum);

175 submitted regular papers (after some withdrawals)

Total of 69 papers accepted (39%)

Regular and short: 52 (29%)

- Best Paper Award:

It is a technical issue; three papers were selected, and sent to external reviewers. A paper is now selected but the Steering Committee needs to approve the procedure and selection. Annex II of the Conference Guidelines gives the procedure for this. We may need to review and clarify this.

Proposal to present the award at the Gala Dinner given the issues with Wednesday which may prevent several people from coming to the conference

Journal Publication: agreement in place with Integration for a special issue with extended versions of the best/selected papers. This would be an option to doing the book (at no cost according to recent information from Ricardo Reis). This will be discussed later

- Social program: Steering Committee should provide feedback upon relevance and quality.

- Financial aspects: a booklet with clear indication of all expenses and budget issues is ready, will be updated/finalized and sent to the Steering Committee members .

- Web site management cost can be amortized as pages can be reused; domain name is also payed for (2 years)

- Extra costs, 6K includes 10Eur*day*person for IFIP plus IEEE Xplore.

Revenue:

- Registration fees such that 80 people is break-even

- Discussion on registration rules to be held later

- PhD Forum: there is money from IFIP which can be used for subsidizing students from emerging countries; this needs to be explicitly mentioned in the call for papers (VLSI-SoC or PhD Forum call). The exact rules on what can be payed, up to what percentage of costs, etc, needs to be clarified and advertised.

 

Relevant set of conclusions with comments for future editions

Some raise points that require further discussion as they regard current and future policy.

 

Michel thanks David and all the people involved in the organization of the conference.

 

 

- IFIP VLSI-SoC Steering Committee

 

Steering Committee members are all present. Ricardo, as current coordinator of the steering Committee states the recommendations of the SC

After meetings held by the SC members, it was agreed that

- Salvador Mir will take over as chair of the SC

- Addition of new members to the SC, which is considered as necessary to refresh the group and include more ideas is still being considered and will be reported later for the WG approval.

 

- It was decided that the best papers of the conferences from 2010 should be printed as a book in order to guarantee that the advertised procedure of the conference is indeed followed. The issues of rising costs for book production is perhaps moot, as the new agreement between IFIP and Springer gives the conference organizers 45 copies for free and the ability to buy more at a special price (dependent upon the number of pages, number of copies, etc). The 45 copies should be sufficient to send a copy to each paper author, as proposed. Ricardo states that this has no cost for the conference, other than the shipping costs to send the copies for the authors. David will get back to the EiC of Integration to indicate that this option will not be followed this year if the commitment to publish with Springer is firm (verification with IFIP pending).

 

- The option to send the best papers to a journal as opposed to a Springer book is a very good one and should be considered for future editions. But this has to be considered in the framework of the current agreement between IFIP and Springer. Options include printing proceedings as a book, or as lecture notes. This needs to be further discussed and consequences (with Springer, IEEE, etc) clarified. The flexibility in the agreement with Springer needs to be better understood.

 

- The issue of registrations and the rule of registrations per paper (i.e. the requirement to have a distinct registration per paper) is not what have been applied in the past at VLSI-SoC.

David clarifies that many conferences do indeed force this rule, and explain the rules used in the text of the call for papers and submission on the web site without contradiction (1) : one different registration for each accepted paper.

Luc disagrees and mention that special rules concerning registration should be well and clearly mentioned in the Call for Papers.

There was an extensive discussion about the implications of the wording of the traditional 1-page call for papers and published information on the VLSI-SoC website, as it can be understood in several ways and it was also compared with other call for papers of other well-known conferences in the domains of VLSI-SoC that do not indicate exhaustive registration rules.

This last issue raises a discussion of whether the rule is fair and was properly and conveniently advertised. Michel presents the opinion of Bernhard Eschermann to whom he asked for his thoughts on the subject: there is no general IFIP rule on this that requires conference organisers to act in a particular way. However, in the case of IFIP-sponsored conferences, where the organiser has to pay a fee to IFIP per participant, IFIP collects the fee per person, i.e. for a person presenting 2 papers, the conference organiser still only has to pay the IFIP fee for one person. Thus, the underlying idea of IFIP is that a person only has to pay once, no matter how many papers this person presents. Michel mentions that in essence all solutions are acceptable, considering the trends seen in conferences nowadays to balance budgets by requiring one distinct registration per paper, and report a suggestion of Nanni de Micheli: whenever two papers are accepted from the same author, the organizers should make an effort to advertise that the cost of registration for students is low on purpose and the idea is for people to send in students.This should be done in order to guarantee that more students come to the conference.

 

Salvador, as the new SC coordinator clarifies the recommendation of the SC. For this year as per the following years, the responsibility always falls to the general chair and the SC supports it. It is the SC's recommendation that it should be allowed for a person to submit multiple papers and pay a single registration.After the list of accepted papers has been provided by the TPC, an author of multiple papers will be strongly encouraged by the General Chair to present a single paper and to let students or other colleagues to present the other papers. The SCs understands the necessity to clarify this in the call for papers in no uncertain terms and supports the decision of the General Chair in VLSI-SoC 2010.

 

 

 

- Election of WG 10.5 Chair

 

Michel points out that it is required to elect a new WG chair as his term is up (3 years). Currently Flavio Wagner is Past Chair and Luis Miguel and Ricardo are vice-chairs.

Michel opens the discussion and ask for candidates to propose themselves but there is no candidate. Michel mentions that anticipating this possibility he has made contacts with a few members, including the vice-chairs, in order to guarantee that a viable candidate is available.Dominique Borrione is now proposed as a candidate.Dominique states that she is willing to take the position even though she thinks that having a French person succeeding a French chair could be seen as unfair to other countries. However, since there are no candidates, she accepts the position.A round of applauses makes it clear that the candidacy is accepted.

 

Dominique will be the next WG Chair, Michel Past Chair and Luis Miguel and Ricardo Vice-Chairs.

 

 

- Date/Location of next  WG Meetings

The next meeting is proposed for March 14th at DATE 2011 in Grenoble

 

 

Note : Topics not discussed during the meeting :

- Proposals for other future VLSI-SoC editions

- Activities on green computing a special track has been organized during this edition of VLSI SOC. A feedback will be given to Bernhard Eschermann by michel.

- Suggestion for New WG Members.

 

 

     

Michel ROBERT

Chair of the IFIP WG 10.5

 

 

   

 

 

(1)

o   Preliminary call for papers content of VLSI SOC 2010 (as shown here: http://www.vlsi-soc.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=67&Itemid=54) :

Papers will be accepted for regular or poster presentation at the conference. Every accepted paper must have at least one author registered to the conference by the time the camera-ready paper is submitted

 

o   Paper submission VLSI SOC 2010 website content (http://www.vlsi-soc.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=69&Itemid=58) refines further the above statement, as follows:

Papers will be accepted for regular or poster presentation at the conference. Every accepted paper must have at least one author registered (as Full Registration) to the conference by the time the camera-ready paper is submitted; the author is also expected to attend the conference and present the paper. One person may be author in several presentations, but there must be one different registration for each accepted paper (one author may register several times if needed).