Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2001 13:07:16 -0700 From: Rajesh Kumar GUPTA Organization: UC Irvine To: Barbara Wehner CC: dsmith@topher.net, mflomen@synopsys.com, aed@research.bell-labs.com, weilcad@yahoo.com, nanni@galileo.stanford.edu, Rajesh Gupta , Mona Zaghloul References: 1 Dear Mona, Barbara: Here is an overview of the CANDE activities for the past year. More details, meeting minutes are available on the CANDE website http://www.cande.net (the members area is protected by login ID: "cande" and password: "jollyrancher"). I am arriving into Sydney on Friday, and most likely I will be able to attend the TC meeting. CANDE Report: The CANDE group holds two planning meetings (at DAC and ICCAD) and a CANDE Technical Meeting every year. The meeting attendance and minutes are available on the CANDE website http://www.cande.net (protected). The CANDE Technical Meeting had been scheduled in the Fall of each year except for last 4-5 years. At the ICCAD'00 planning meeting in November 2000, the membership voted to restore the status quo ante. Consequently, the CANDE'2001 has been scheduled for September 20001 this year. The topics under discussion are available on the CANDE website. In addition to this planning, this past year CANDE membership addressed the following issues: a. CANDE BYLAWS: As resolved by the VP-TC in the May 2000 meeting in Vienna, CANDE undertook and worked out a set of bylaws. I am happy to report that these bylaws were actively debated and contributed to by the CANDE membership. These bylaws were formally adopted at the ICCAD'00 meeting of CANDE. The bylaws are availble on the CANDE website. As per the newly adopted bylaws, the CANDE membership voted to expand the CANDE officers to include two new positions for members-at-large which will enable the group to undertake a larger number of technical efforts. b. SOCIETY RELATIONSHIP: There was progress in identifying areas where CANDE can be an active participant within the society and contribute to its overall charter. To bring the CANDE membership to speed, special presentation on the Society membership and IEEE membership levels was given at the DAC'00 meeting. CANDE membership expressed strong interest in participating closely with the society on a number of issues that directly affect the larger electronic design automation community. THese include: in providing input to the society in its selection of society representatives to the DAC executive community; solicitations for IEEE TCAD and TVLSI; solicitation and recommendation of nomineed for IEEE Fellows from the EDA community and participation into DAC-related projects by the society. The first issue of representation to the DAC EC is a critical one in managing society's continued participation with the DAC organization: there are a total of three representatives from the society to the DAC -- one to EXCOMM and two to the SCS. It is important that these appointments be aligned with the CASS so as to keep CASS EXCOMM and BOG directly involved with the DAC decision making bodies. Several suggestions have been made on how CANDE can help which are discussed in the meeting minutes. Bottomline on this issue is: CANDE can serve as a resource and sounding board for CASS in ensuring its strong ties to DAC and ICCAD. c. BILL MCCALLA AWARD: As you may be aware that Bill McCalla was not only an active member of CANDE but also one of the founding organizers of ICCAD. Consequently, the CANDE membership originated the idea of an award to honor his memory. This issue was tabled and championed to a successful conclusion by Ian Getreu. We are very appreciative of the CASS support and expediency in establishing this award. d. CAD TRACK AT ISCAS: The CAD track committee consisted of Dan Gajski, Dick Smith, Mark Flomenhoft and R. Gupta (Chair). This was a monumental task with almost 400 papers reviewed. Many thanks to Wayne Wolf for his help in reviews and selection process. In the end all the papers were reviewed by at least three reviewers and the track formed. Post martem, it is a good moment to examine the structure and content of the CAD track at ISCAS. As you know, the EDA community boasts of two very established and highly selective conferences, DAC and ICCAD, both co-sponsored by CASS. The CAD track at ISCAS, by comparison, tends to be a really mixed bag of submissions from applications of circuit theory to marginal quality submissions in the mainstream EDA. CANDE, for years, has felt that CASS should view ISCAS as one of the two (or three) events rather than being representative of all the society's interests. THis would mean that CAD track at ISCAS is aligned with the attendee interests which are dominated by Signal processing, circuit theory and analog design. This will also be complementary to submissions at DAC and ICCAD which are more in line with VLSI/CAD and Embedded Systems. Over 10% of the submissions of the "CAD track" this year at ISCAS were actually very marginally related to what is considered CAD now (e.g., methods and tools to assist circuit analysis), consequently it was very hard to find competent reviewers within the community that CANDE represents (many many thanks for Graham, Shuji and Chris Tomazou in their help with finding additional reviewers). When all said is done, the subcommittee went through almost as many submissions that DAC or ICCAD receive in a very short period of time during a very busy season (late September to October). This is an activity, I certainly would not recommend my successors at CANDE to undertake without extensive planning within CANDE and, more importantly, lining up the reviewers in domains which are certainly absent from CANDE menu of technical expertise. I do believe however that the suggestion from CANDE and others about aligning CAD/EDA submissions at ISCAS should be explored further and will be in the long term interests of the society and ISCAS. Rajesh