Minutes of the IFIP Working Group Meeting

Perth, Parmelia Hilton Hotel, October 19th, 2005

Present: G.Milne, V.Mooney, R.Reis, M.Robert, D.Sciuto, L.M.Silveira, F.Wagner

Apologies: D.Borrione, K.Choi, L.Claesen, C.Delgado-Kloos, N.Dutt, S.Johnson, K.Muller-Glaser, F.Rammig, A.Yamada

Invited guests: S.Mir, A.Osseiran, A.Rettberg

1. International Embedded Systems Symposium

Achim Rettberg (C-Lab, Germany) gave a brief report on the first edition of the International Embedded Systems Symposium, a new WG-sponsored event which was successfully held in Manaus, Brazil, in August 2005. General chairs were Achim Rettberg (C-Lab) and Mauro Zanella (ZF Lemfõrder Fahrwerktechnik, Germany), and co-chair was F.Rammig. The home-page of the event may be found at http://www.iess.org.

2. EduTech'2005

Achim Rettberg (C-Lab, Germany) reported on EduTech'2005, to be held in Perth on October 20 and 21, together with VLSI-SoC, which he is organizing together with Christophe Bobda (University of Erlangen, Germany). He reported on the difficulty of organizing a scientific event on this subject on a yearly basis. The event should mainly consist of presentations of experiments, tools, and courses. A similar initiative is the Microelectronic Systems Education event, which is held every two years in the United States, around DAC, alternating with the European Workshop on Microelectronics Education, which is held on even years in Europe. Next edition of EduTech could be planned to be held together with DATE 2007. It would be important to have a member of TC3, which co-sponsors the event, as co-organizer. This did not happen in the 2005 edition.

3. VLSI-SoC'2005

A.Osseiran (ECU, Perth) reported on VLSI-SoC, held in Perth on October 17-19. There was an attendance of around 100 participants, which can be considered as a good number considering travel difficulties and was higher than the break-even number of attendees regarding the event budget. Besides the regular technical program, six students presented their theses at the PhD forum. Local proceedings have been distributed to the participants, holding the IFIP ISBN. A book containing the best papers (from 20 to 25 papers) will be published by Springer. A.Osseiran prepared a "sponsorship kit", to be used in future editions of the event.

4. VLSI-SoC'2006

Salvador Mir (TIMA, France) gave a report on the organization of VLSI-SoC'2006, to be held in Nice in October 2006. Giovanni De Micheli (EPFL, Switzerland) will be the Program Chair and is intending to held a PC meeting for paper selection, for instance around ISCAS. The WG suggested that authors of papers accepted as posters should make a brief introduction of their works at the end of regular sessions. The WG expressed that the PC should include a larger number of WG 10.5 members than in the VLSI-SoC'2005 edition. It has been also expressed that the Call for Papers gives an excessive emphasis on topics related to photonics and MEMS, which are outside the WG scope, and that this should be corrected in future versions.

The new IEEE CEDA (Council on EDA) expressed its intention in co-sponsoring the VLSI-SoC series with financial involvement, starting from 5% and arriving up to 20-25%. The WG approved the CEDA co-sponsorship for 2006, with a 5% financial involvement. For the publicity, 5000 paper copies of the Call for Papers will be distributed. M.Robert, who was responsible for the 2001 edition of VLSI-SoC, will help the organizers in approaching potential sponsors. The WG approved the financial support to the PhD forum to be held together with VLSI-SoC'2006.

5. VLSI-SoC'2007

Vincent Mooney (Georgia Tech, USA) gave a very brief report on the organization of the 2007 edition of VLSI-SoC, which will be held in Atlanta, USA, with local organization of Georgia Tech.

6. New member

Vincent Mooney (Georgia Tech, USA) made a detailed and interesting presentation of his research and education activities, which were very much appreciated by the WG members. This presentation concluded the formal procedure for his nomination as a new WG member. His CV had been already considered during a previous electronic consultation to all WG members, which resulted in a unanimous approval of his nomination.

7. Membership

Considering the restricted number of members that are effectively active in WG activities, the WG discussed strategies that could be added to the measures regarding membership refreshment that were already approved at the previous meeting in Munich in March 2005 (see corresponding minutes). G.Milne suggested that people active in the SIGs should be invited to become members of WG 10.5. It has been also suggested that WG meetings should be held together with the SIG events (CHARME and DIPES). An effort should also be made to have joint editions of VLSI-SoC and the SIG events.

8. Next meeting

The next WG meeting will be held in Munich, Germany, together with the DATE conference, in March 2006.