24th international conference on VLSI Design and 10th conference on embedded systems inaugurated

CHENNAI, INDIA: The 24th International Conference on VLSI Design and 10th on Embedded Systems organized by VLSI Society of India was inaugurated by Prof. V G Idichandy, Deputy Director, IIT–Madras at the institute campus, who also released the VLSI souvenir on the occasion. In all 330 research papers were received out of which 66 were accepted and are being presented at the conference.

Delivering the keynote address, Thomas H Lee, Professor, Stanford University, said: “VLSI Design and embedded systems are core technologies that are behind the electronic products that we use widely today, including cell phones, music players and computers. There is a need to have discussions on the trend and future of this segment as these are the backbone of all electronics used widely today in various domains such as Communications, Consumer, Industrial, Automotive, Defense and Health Care. I strongly believe embedded to be the next big thing driven by the increasing pervasiveness of microprocessors in all walks of life.”

Speaking on VLSI Design from Indian academician perspective, Praveen Vishakantaiah, president, Intel India said: “With India projected to consume $50 billion worth of embedded electronics by 2020 it is emerging as a market of focus and the future. The key challenge we face today is lack of research efforts and researches. This is critical as that is the pinnacle of the embedded and VLSI arena and fuels innovation. An encouraging sign is the increasing number of partnerships companies in this space are entering into with educational institutes for doing research programs and internships.”

Kamakoti, general co-chair, VLSI and Professor at Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT-Madras, speaking on the general vision of VLSI Design Conference 2011 noted: “One area of focus for the conference is to make students understand the phenomenal opportunity in the embedded and VLSI arena. And by listening to and seeing the innovations happening be inspired to take it to greater heights through their intelligence and effort. Realizing this importance, we have designed the conference with several complementary parts – full-day tutorials, research paper presentations, special sessions with invited embedded tutorials, hot topic presentations, keynote and banquet talks, and the industry and education forums.”

In his comments, Prof. Vishwani Agrawal of Auburn University, US and Member of VLSI committee, added: "VLSI Design 2011 will definitely add value to the industry by providing a platform for the experts to discuss the issues of this industry. After 13 years, we have organized the annual premier joint conference of India at Chennai as we foresee the city emerging as a potential hub for the industry.”

VLSI Design 2011 focuses on “Embedded products for emerging markets- Infrastructure, Energy & Automotive” as the key conference theme and will see more than 100 eminent global and Indian industry experts share trends, opportunities and challenges of India’s growing VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) sector. Discussions and deliberations will focus on technology, manufacturing, markets, applications, finance and policy and a first-of-its-kind workshop on Reliability Aware System Design and Test (RASDAT) (Jan 6th and 7th). The three-day conference will also include technical paper session on latest research and embedded tutorials.

Industry presentation sessions, panel discussions and design contests and industrial exhibits to round off the program. Eminent speakers at the event include; Rahul Sarpeshkar (Associate Professor, MIT): Bioelectronics, Kaushik Roy (Professor, Purdue University): Post-Silicon technologies: Prospects and Perspectives, Anant Agarwal (CTO, Tilera and Professor, MIT): The Future of Multicore, Peter Kinget (Associate Prof., Columbia University): Designing Analog and RF Circuits in Nanoscale CMOS Technologies: Scale the Supply, Reduce the Area and Use Digital Gates, Rajeev Madhavan (CEO, Magma Design Automation): Real Men do Real Silicon, Leon Stok (VP, IBM): High-end Processor design in Advanced CMOS Technologies. The Conference covers the entire gamut of activities under the two folds of Semiconductor Industry - VLSI and Embedded systems.