Minutes of the IFIP Working Group Meeting

San Francisco, Moscone Center, July 25th, 2006

Present: J.Becker, K.Choi, J.Darringer, N.Dutt, D.Gale, A.Jerraya, V.Mooney, R.Reis, M.Robert, W.Rosenstiel, D.Sciuto, L.M.Silveira, P.Subra, E.Villar, F.Wagner

Apologies: E.Aas, D.Borrione, F.Brglez, L.Claesen, J.Damore, C.Delgado-Kloos, W.Grass, T.Margaria, G.Milne, K.Müller-Glaser, F.Rammig, A.Stempkovsky, R.Waxman

1. VLSI-SoC'2007

V. Mooney gave a report on the organization of VLSI-SoC'2007, which will be held in Atlanta. Proceedings will follow the same model as in 2006, with proceedings published by IEEE and a later book published by Springer, containing extended versions of the best papers.

2. VLSI-SoC'2006

The final program of VLSI-SoC'2006 is available and has been distributed to the meeting's participants.

3. Membership reorganization

F.Wagner reported on a proposal of membership reorganization, which has been discussed and formulated by a small task force under his coordination. According to this proposal, members will belong to three categories:

Ordinary members - Those members are expected to participate at the meetings, organize events, participate in PCs and as reviewers. New members shall be searched for this group only. Members loose this status after missing N meetings in sequence.

Honorary (or corresponding) members - These are members the WG is proud of, due to their names and activities. The WG accepts that due to heavy workload they can rarely attend meetings and show limited activities in IFIP events. However, some elementary activities are expected. At least they should send apologies. Members loose this status after not sending apologies for N meetings in sequence. By attending a meeting, these members are automatically moved to the Ordinary status.

Emeritus members - Those members who retired from the active work in our field but have shown activities within WG 10.5 should be honoured by this status.

As a consequence, letters have been sent to 25 members, asking them whether they should prefer to become honorary members or to resign. Nine members already responded that they prefer to become honorary members. One member expects to become active again and prefers to remain as an ordinary member. Three other members resigned (R.Camposano, P.Paulin, and A.Richard Newton).

4. CODES-ISSS

In previous years, IFIP WG 10.5 has co-sponsored the CODES-ISSS conference with financial involvement. For the 2006 edition, however, co-sponsorship will have no financial involvement, since CODES-ISSS is being organized together with other events (CASES and EMSOFT). This issue has been discussed and clarified during the meeting. For the next year's edition, it is expected that a co-sponsorship with financial involvement can be approved again. N.Dutt, the IFIP representative in the CODES-ISSS organizing committee, will follow this issue.

5. Request for co-sponsorship

The WG discussed the request for co-sponsorship of the 2007 edition of the RSP - Rapid Systems Prototyping Workshop, which is traditionally sponsored by IEEE CS and will be held in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The RSP organizers are also requesting an IFIP grant for supporting the participation of PhD students from third-world countries. The WG members considered that the IFIP co-sponsorship is scientifically justified, but expressed concerns about a financial involvement, because there is no information on the financial outcome of previous editions of the workshop. It has been approved that the WG chair will get information on the financial situation of RSP and, based on that, will decide on a possible financial commitment of IFIP.

6. New officers

It has been decided that the WG chair will send a message to the WG members, asking for volunteers for becoming new chair. Volunteers should write a statement, indicating future directions for the WG.

7. Next meetings

The next WG meetings will be held in Nice, in October 2006, together with the VLSI-SoC conference, and again in Nice, in April 2007, together with the DATE conference.