DAC Student Design Contest Seeks Industry Support

Student Submissions Accepted Until December 5
Design Automation Conference 2008

BOULDER, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Design Automation Conference (DAC) announced today that industry sponsorships are being sought for this year’s Student Design Contest. Student Design Contest submissions are also being accepted through Dec. 5, 2007.

The prestigious annual Student Design Conference, jointly sponsored by the Design Automation Conference (DAC) and the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), promotes excellence in electronic systems design and is made possible through the contributions of corporate sponsors. Winners will be recognized in an award ceremony to be held during DAC, the electronic design automation (EDA) industry’s premier event, June 8 – 13, 2008 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, Calif.

"The Student Design Contest encourages innovative research that integrates all aspects of design, from system level design to tools, methodologies and implementation. Students that have participated in the contest have always greatly enjoyed it and felt it was an important milestone in their careers," said Limor Fix, general chair, 45th DAC executive committee.

This year’s Student Design Contest co-chairs are Bill Bowhill, Senior Principal Engineer, Intel Massachusetts, and Byunghoo Jung, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University.

“The DAC/ISSCC Student Design Contest presents graduate and undergraduate students with a unique opportunity to be recognized for the meticulous research work they have completed during their studies,” said Jung. “Similarly, the contest presents the EDA industry with the opportunity to see what the future leaders of the industry are doing.”

Criteria for Entering, Awards and Honors

The contest accepts designs for analog, digital or programmable circuits and systems. Submissions can be embodied as integrated circuits (ICs), reconfigurable processors, systems on chips (SoCs), platform-based or embedded systems designs.

Submissions are invited from full-time graduate and undergraduate students in three categories: operational, which means that an IC design was built and tested; system design, which focuses on FPGA or other programmable architectures; and conceptual, where a project was designed and simulated, but need not have been implemented yet. The design must be part of the students’ course or research work at the university and must have been completed within 18 months prior to the Dec. 5, 2007 submission deadline.

The total prize money is expected to be more than $20,000, shared among 10 design award recipients. Winners will be notified prior to the 45th DAC and offered travel assistance to attend.

Winning submissions will be displayed as posters at the DAC University Booth on the exhibit floor. Selected winning entries may be included in the Technical Program, at the discretion of the Technical Program Committee. Winners will also be invited to present at a special poster session at ISSCC 2008 to be held in February in San Francisco.

Corporate Sponsorships Available

Byunghoo Jung is actively soliciting electronics companies for $2,000 contributions to support the contest. As a sponsor, company representatives serve as judges and get first access to all design projects.

Last year’s corporate sponsors included Cadence Design Systems, IBM Corp., Intel Corp., Mentor Graphics, Mindspeed Technologies, Inc., Synopsys, Inc. and Tanner EDA, along with industry support from the IEEE Council on EDA, the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, and the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC).

Student Design Contest, Sponsorship Opportunity Details

For more details on the Student Design Contest, visit the DAC Web site: http://www.dac.com/45th/studcon.html. To find out more about sponsorship opportunities, contact Byunghoo Jung at (765) 494-2866 or via e-mail at jungb@purdue.edu.

The Student Design Contest was founded by the University of Utah’s Kent Smith in 1981, and has been managed by DAC since 2000. In 2002, DAC began partnering with ISSCC to promote and manage the contest.

About DAC

The Design Automation Conference (DAC) is recognized as the premier event for the design of electronic circuits and systems, and for Electronic Design Automation (EDA) and silicon solutions. A diverse worldwide community representing more than 1,500 organizations attends each year, from system designers and architects, logic and circuit designers, validation engineers, CAD managers, senior managers and executives to researchers and academics from leading universities. Close to 60 technical sessions offer information on recent developments and trends, management practices and new products, methodologies and technologies selected by a diverse committee of electronic design experts. A highlight is its Exhibition and Suite area with approximately 250 of the leading and emerging EDA, silicon and IP providers. The conference is sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Design Automation (ACM/SIGDA), the Circuits and Systems Society and Council on Electronic Design Automation of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE/CASS/CEDA) and the Electronic Design Automation Consortium (EDA Consortium). More details are available at: www.dac.com.