Minutes of the IFIP Working Group Meeting

Pirenópolis, Brazil, September 10th, 2001

 

Present: F.Wagner, N.Dutt, F.Rammig, M.Fujita, R.Hartenstein

Apologies: J.Damore, S.Johnson, K.Choi, L.Claesen, K.Müller-Glaeser, E.Aas, E.Villar, P.Schwarz, A.Jerraya, C.Delgado Kloos, J.Darringer, M.Barbacci, A.Pawlak, G.Hellestrand, J.-Y.Joo, A.Stempkovski, K.-H.Diener, M.Robert, P.Ivey, M.Imai, A.Yamada, R.Reis, J.Mermet, D.Borrione

 

  1. F.Wagner presented the current status and activities of the WG, based on a report he made at the TC10 meeting on this same day. This report is appended to these minutes. It shows that the WG has a low degree of activity, sponsoring few events and having almost no new initiatives and many members that are not active.
  2. The role of WG 10.5 has been discussed, considering the current situation where other societies organize many successful conferences in our field. It has been concluded that the WG may still have an important role:
    1. by coordinating national initiatives and stimulating international cooperation, without competing with national societies that are members of IFIP;
    2. by organizing activities in niches where there is no competition with other societies (examples are the DIPES and CHARME conferences);
    3. by organizing workshops on hot and speculative topics, that are not covered by other events. These workshops should constitute the main goal of the WG meetings. They could result in books, showing the view of the WG experts on subjects that are relevant for future research and industry development; and
    4. by organizing new types of activities on an international basis. Examples could be a forum for PhD students in our field, as well as tutorials from experts and summer schools, eventually organized in different regions of the world.
  3. A "call for proposals" of new initiatives (to be called "programs") will be circulated among all WG members. A proposal should state the goals of the program and identify a "program director", someone who would organize it. This person does not need to be a current member of the WG. The recruitment of young researchers would be encouraged, because they can bring the needed enthusiasm and perceive personal benefits from this activity.
  4. Funds for these programs may be raised from TC10 and from IFIP. IFIP has money for travel grants for students and for tutorials in developing countries, for instance. TC10 has a budget of 56,000 Euro for 2002. Good proposals from our WG can compete for this money.
  5. A workshop for discussing and elaborating an "IFIP roadmap in design technologies" has been proposed as another initiative. This roadmap would result in a document that would be widely distributed as our contribution to the field. This workshop could be held in conjunction with the IFIP World Congress in Montreal in 2002. We need to identify immediately a responsible for proposing the format and contents of this workshop. This proposal would be discussed, refined, and approved at our next meeting in Montpellier. F.Rammig volunteered to identify this person.
  6. R.Hartenstein suggested, as another initiative, a workshop for discussing Education. He emphasized that Computer Science curricula should be influenced by new computing paradigms that arise from our field, such as reconfigurable computing.
  7. A new model of managing the WG has been discussed. We have 64 members, and many of them, although senior experts in the field, don't have an active participation in the WG activities. This lack of interest may be due to the facts that the WG has had very few new initiatives in recent years, organize few events, and has meetings where only administrative issues are discussed. The WG should still remain a gathering of experts, but meetings should be devoted to technical discussions and workshops. Administrative issues could be managed by a small "steering committee", consisting of people with concrete commitments. This committee would be enlarged by other people that is temporarily responsible for specific activities: "program directors" (see agenda item 3) and SIG chairs. If the WG has such a "kernel" of members with concrete and specific duties, it may afford to have a large number of members that, although not active, provide expertise in our field and are available for participating at our events and workshops.
  8. The procedure for admission of new members has been discussed. New members should not be invited because of personal relationships to current members. Instead, it has been proposed that new members should be admitted only in one of the following situations: a) when the WG needs to expand its expertise to relevant or new subjects that are poorly covered by the current membership; b) when the WG needs to expand its membership in certain geographical regions; c) to replace members that are leaving the group, when our coverage of a certain subject or region must be maintained. The WG should actively identify and attract new members, especially among young researchers, when it feels that we are not covering certain subjects and/or regions.
  9. The identification of the research interests of the members should be pursued. Only 19 out of 64 members responded the message from the chair, asking for their research interests. It was decided that we should utilize another approach for this survey. A list of topics, probably organized in a two-level hierarchy, will be sent through our mailing list. This list may be organized from similar lists taken from the call for papers of large conferences, such as DAC and DATE. Each member will respond by stating his/her interest regarding each topic our sub-topic, according to three possible levels: (1) I would not attend a conference on this topic; (2) I could attend a conference on this topic; (3) I would definitely attend a conference on this topic. The results of this survey will be presented and discussed at our next meeting in Montpellier. From them, we should be able to define the scope of our WG, since this has not been done since its creation in 1994.
  10. The current situation of the SIGs has been briefly assessed. SIG-ES has been created in 2000 but does not show impetus. SIG-CHARME will be proposed officially soon. SIG-CODES has been discontinued. SIG-VHDL had no activity, and its relaunching as SIG-DL is being considered by a group of WG members.
  11. The following agenda is proposed for our next meeting in Montpellier:
    1. After Montpellier, a next meeting could be held in Montreal, during the IFIP World Congress. DIPES will run as a track of the Congress, and we will also try to hold there the workshop for discussing a roadmap on Design Technologies. The opportunity of helding another meeting, between Montpellier and Montreal, will be discussed in Montpellier.

     

     

    REPORT ON THE ACTIVITIES OF WG 10.5

    AUGUST 2000 - SEPTEMBER 2001

    Presented at the TC 10 Meeting, Pirenópolis, Brazil, September 10th 2001

     

    1. MEETINGS

    1.1 Regular meetings since August 2000

    August 23rd, 2000 - Beijing, China

    March 12th, 2001 - Munich, Germany

    The corresponding minutes can be found at our site:

    http://www.inf.ufrgs.br/ifip10-5/real-index.html

     

    1.2 Informal meetings

    June 20th, 2001 - Las Vegas, USA

     

    1.3 Next meetings

    September 10th, 2001 - Pirenópolis, Brazil

    December 5th, 2001 - Montpellier, France

     

    2. EVENTS

    APChDL'2000 - Asia-Pacific Chip Design Language Conference

    Beijing, China, August 2000

    Sponsored by WG 10.5

    -- proceedings published as part of the IFIP World Congress proceedings

     

    SBCCI'2000 - Symposium on Integrated Circuits and Systems Design

    Manaus, Brazil, September 2000

    Organized by SBC, co-sponsorship of WG 10.5

    -- proceedings published by IEEE Computer Society Press

     

    FDL'2000 - Forum on Design Languages

    Tuebingen, Germany, September 2000

    Organized by ECSI, co-sponsorship of WG 10.5

    -- papers published on a CD-ROM

    -- best papers published on the book

    System-on-Chip Methodologies and Design Languages

    Edited by Peter Ashenden, Jean Mermet, Ralf Seepold

    Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001

     

    DIPES'2000 - Distributed and Parallel Embedded Systems

    Schloss Eringerfeld, Germany, October 2000

    Co-sponsored by WG 10.5, WG 10.3 and WG 10.4

    -- proceedings published as a book

    Architecture and Design of Distributed Embedded Systems

    Edited by Bernd Kleinjohann

    Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001

     

    IP-BASED DESIGN'2000 - Int. Workshop on IP-based Synthesis and SoC Design

    Grenoble, France, December 2000

    Organized by INPG and Design & Reuse, sponsored by WG 10.5

    -- participants edition published by the local organizers

     

    FDL'2001 - Forum on Design Languages

    Lyon, France, September 2001

    Organized by ECSI, co-sponsorship of WG 10.5

    -- papers published on a CD-ROM

    -- best papers will be selected for a future book

     

    SBCCI'2001 - Symposium on Integrated Circuits and Systems Design

    Pirenopolis, Brazil, September 2001

    Organized by SBC, co-sponsorship of WG 10.5

    -- proceedings to be published by IEEE Computer Society Press

     

    CHARME'2001 - Working Conference on Correct Hardware Design and Verification Methods

    Livingston, Scotland, September 2001

    Sponsored by WG 10.5

    -- proceedings to be published by Springer-Verlag

    Lecture Notes Volume 2144

     

    3. OTHER PUBLICATIONS

     

    System-on-Chip Methodologies and Design Languages

    Edited by Peter Ashenden, Jean Mermet, Ralf Seepold

    Best papers from

    - HDLCon'2000 - Hardware Description Language Conference and Exhibition

    - FDL'2000 - Forum on Design Languages

    - APChDL'2000 - Asia Pacific Chip Design Language Conference

    Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, June 2001

     

    4. SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS

    SIG-CODES

    Special Interest Group on Hardware / Software Codesign

    Due to very low degree of activity, this SIG decided to propose its discontinuation. This was approved at the WG meeting on March 12th, 2001.

     

    SIG-DL

    Special Interest Group on Design Languages

    Former SIG-VHDL

    Jointly sponsored by WG 10.5 and ECSI

    John Willis and others are trying to relaunch the SIG, which has very low degree of activity.

     

    SIG-ES

    Special Interest Group on Embedded Systems

    Jointly sponsored by IFIP Working Groups 10.3, 10.4 and 10.5

    This SIG has been created in October 2000. It will be responsible for the organization of the DIPES conference - "Distributed and Parallel Embedded Systems". Current chair is Bernd Kleinjohann (C-Lab, Germany).

     

    SIG-CHARME

    There are plans to create a Special Interest Group on Formal Methods, which would be responsible for the organization of the CHARME conference - Working Conference on Correct Hardware Design and Verification Methods. A decision may be taken at the next CHARME conference (September 4-7, 2001).

     

    5. OFFICERS

    Flávio R. Wagner (UFRGS, Brazil) has been elected new chair at the regular meeting on March 12th, 2001.

    Two vice-chairs continue their duties - Nikil Dutt (Irvine, USA) and Masaharu Imai (Osaka University, Japan) - and a third vice-chair has been elected - Eugenio Villar (Univ. of Cantabria, Spain).

     

    6. MEMBERSHIP

    The WG has now 64 members, with the following distribution:

    North America - 22

    Europe - 31

    Asia / Pacific - 9

    South America - 2