Evolving EDA Beyond its E-Roots: An Overview (invited paper)

Andrew B. Kahng†‡ and Farinaz Koushanfar†∗ †ECE and ‡CSE Depts., UC San Diego

*ECE Dept., Rice University {abk,fkoushanfar}@ucsd.edu

Outline

• Motivation, challenges, and our story

• Study groups overview– Group I: Systemization of prior efforts– Group II: Metrics of DA research impact– Group III: Vision for the EDA field

• Research gap analysis

• The 2015 DA perspective challenge

• Looking forward

Motivation

• Electronic design automation (EDA) – is an engineering success story – has mainly focused on supporting cost scaling, i.e., “More Moore”– one of the first truly inter-disciplinary fields– has reached a mature state as semiconductors also matured– is witnessing a diminished interest among ECE and CS students

• Urgent to revisit how the EDA field will evolve & grow

• Healthy growth requires exciting new directions as well as a steady supply of new experts trained at the graduate level

Challenges

• How can the EDA paradigms and methodologies be leveraged for DA in other, emerging domains to solve standing real-world problems?

• EDA researchers actively contribute to other fields’ DA

• But… evolution and growth as a community requires a more systematic, coherent effort – as well as vision

• How can EDA systematically “move beyond its E-roots”?

• To address the challenges, we have formed a recent initiative of the IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA)

Our story

• Two seeds of this initiative:– Series of CCC workshops on extreme-scale design automation– CANDE (ComputerAided Network DEsign) committee (since 1972)

• Redirecting CANDE under CEDA president-elect, Dr. Shishpal Rawat, focusing on new initiatives/ activities

• Our team (organized into three study groups): – Group I: Farinaz Koushanfar, Gang Qu, Zhiru Zhang– Group II: Andrew B. Kahng, Gi-Joon Nam, David Pan– Group III: Deming Chen, Priyank Kalla, Subhasish Mitra, Steven

Levitan, Miodrag Potkonjak

Study Groups Overview• Group I: Systemization of prior efforts

– Summarized & analyzed: (i) Recent roadmaps; (ii) NSF EDA Expedition grants; and (iii) SRC focused research centers

• Group II: Metrics of DA research impact– Analysis of research outputs, leveraged funding, industry and publication

data with modern text mining

• Group III: Vision for the EDA field– Focusing on new opportunities inspired by technologies and

applications, and real-world problems

• More details in this session talks and papers[1][2][3]

[1] Koushanfar, Mirhoseini, Qu, Zhang, "DA Systemization of Knowledge: A Catalog of Prior Forward-Looking Initiatives (invited paper)", ICCAD 2015.[2] Kahng, Luo, Nam, Nath, Pan, Robins, " Toward Metrics of Design Automation Research Impact (invited paper)", ICCAD 2015.[3] Potkonjak, Chen, Kalla, Levitan, “DA Vision 2015: From Here to Eternity (invited paper)", ICCAD 2015.

RESEARCH GAP ANALYSIS

Research gap analysis (1/2)

• SRC studies to determine the magnitude of research and world-wide “research gap”– Research needs derived from ITRS technology requirements in

the 2001 and 2003 studies– Massive funding gaps identified in studies

Estimated Worldwide annual research investment to support 2008-14 needs

Research gap analysis (2/2)

• 2001 Recommendations for addressing research gap– The US semiconductor industry must consider increasing $

for long-term horizon ITRS research– SRC and MARCO must explore options to attract foreign

semiconductor companies as full members– SRC and MARCO explore collaborations w foreign consortia– SRC needs better coordination with US government

semiconductor related funding programs

• Many of the recommendations and conclusions of the analysis seem to be timely even today!

DA PERSPECTIVE CHALLENGE 2015

DA perspective challenge 2015 (1/2)

• Submitters of the challenge asked to suggest long-term problems and their challenges:– What is the long-term problem– Why is the problem important and challenging?– What is the state-of-the-art?– What is the problem’s relevance to existing DA tools and

methods? How can DA help in addressing the challenges?– What knowledge, skills, and/or tools needed for addressing?– Is the problem interdisciplinary, requiring expertise other

than DA?– What are the broader impacts?

DA perspective challenge 2015 (2/2)

• 30 submissions, 13 invited to the workshop @DAC’15 – 3-minutes talks to a panel of 6 academic/industrial judges– 1st prize: Huang&Cheng (UCSB) - DA of flexible electronics– 2nd prize: Chen&Li (Penn State) - DA for neuromorphic– 3rd prize: Chang (KAIST) - Energy optimization for EVs– Audience favorite: (U of Calgary) DA of energy systems – Honorable mentions: (IBM Research) DA for networks of

autonomous vehicles; (MIT) DA for trusted hardware

• The prize winners will be participating in our panel

LOOKING FORWARD

Looking forward

• EDA has been successful as a field, but has reached a mature state

• Growing beyond our E-roots requires systematic community effort and vision

• Report on our recent CEDA initiative and efforts of 3 study groups

• Research gap analysis

• DA perspective challenge 2015:– Input from the community about their EDA vision

• Need your help in moving forward!

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Thank you!

• Questions?

• {abk,fkoushanfar}@ucsd.edu