Double figures for DATE

DATE 07 (April 16-20) marks an important milestone for the Design Automation and Test in Europe conference as it reaches its tenth edition. As we went to press, the main technical program was still being finalized, but DATE has again received record submissions, 933 against last year’s 834.

The most obvious change in 2007 is a new venue, the Acropolis conference center in Nice, France. After several successful years in Munich, the shift collocates DATE with another of Europe’s major electronics clusters, Sophia Antipolis.

However, in terms of design trends, what has been happening to DATE’s fundamental structure is of greater significance. Under general chair Rudy Lauwereins of IMEC and technical chair Jan Madsen of the Technical University of Denmark, this year’s edition will offer yet more content that reflects the ongoing drive towards system-level (ESL) design strategies.

The Designers’ Forum has merged into the main conference as a track on Applications Design, offering practical ‘war stories’ that feature the latest tools and methodologies.Meanwhile, the conference’s System Design Records initiative, which addresses systemon- chip and system design for FPGA and other platforms, will also now offer more on embedded systems.

DATE has also increased its section on industrial design, including an invited session dedicated to best practice presentations from leading engineering companies.

More Moore and Darwin

The opening keynote speakers at DATE 07 (Tuesday, April 17) are Dr. Tohru Furuyama, general manager of Toshiba’s Center for Semiconductor Research & Development, and Alan Naumann, CEO of EDA vendor CoWare. Both will address the critical interplay of market demands, design methodologies and the future progress of Moore’s Law.

Furuyama’s speech, “The challenges of the digital consumer and mobile SoCs: more Moore possible”, will look at how Toshiba is tackling sub-100nm requirements for hardware/software co-development/ verification environments, ESL design methodologies and IP reuse platforms that allow functionality to be successfully realized on an SoC by legacy sub-systems with low-power, multi-processor architectures.

Acropolis, the new venue for DATE 07

Naumann will address complementary topics in his speech, “Was Darwin wrong? Has design evolution stopped at the RTL level, or will software and custom processors (or system-level design) extend Moore’s Law?” His thesis will be that more and more companies are adopting an ESL methodology that concentrates on custom processors and software to secure competitive advantage.

Dedicated strands

DATE has again picked out two themes that will be treated to their own ‘Special Day’ strands during the conference.

Wednesday (April 18) will highlight Ubiquitous Communication and Computation. Organized by Petri Liuha of the Nokia Research Center, the sessions will address the applications, architectures, programming and security models needed to realize such networks; the underlying design, verification and test challenges they pose; and their influence on design business models.

Thursday (April 19) will focus on Space and Avionics. Organized by Sylvain Prudhomme of Airbus and Erick Lansard of Alcatel Alenia Space, it will address technology transfer to and from these industries for embedded systems.

Meanwhile, Tuesday (April 17) will also see the return of DATE’s Executive Sessions, bringing together senior executives from the EDA and user communities to address three ‘hot topics’:

• Bridging the field programmable reconfigurable SoC divide;
• Design in the fabless model;
• Automotive systems.

Finally, DATE will also be running a series of Friday Workshops (April 20), following on from the main technical conference and exhibition. The workshops continue to attract several hundred engineers annually, staying on after DATE’s traditional final day to gather more valuable knowledge. More details on their topics as well as the full main technical program for DATE 07 should now be available at www.date-conference.com.