Source: DATE '08
February 15, 2008

European Research Projects Exhibit at DATE´08

London, February 15 , 2008 – DATE as the leading global design event continues to enhance its unique combination of industrial exhibition and the most important conference on system design.

New at DATE´08, European research projects will enrich the exhibition by presenting and demonstrating the latest research results ready for utilization in system and semiconductor product development.

Facing strong global competition the future success of Europe's economy is determined by the ability to innovate and to turn research results into products. In response to this challenge Europe's industry collaborates in numerous research projects and teams up with research institutes and universities, supported by the European Commission and by national authorities.

DATE´08 provides the platform for fast and efficient transfer of the research results into successful products.

The projects exhibiting at DATE´08 feature research done by

System companies like Alcatel-Lucent, AMD, Bosch, Continental, DaimlerChrysler, Philips, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Volkswagen, Volvo, Semiconductor companies like ARM, Atmel, Infineon, NXP, Qimonda, STMicroelectronics, X-FAB, ZMD, EDA vendors like Cadence, Concept Engineering, Mentor, OneSpin Solutions, Start-ups like Chipvision, IPGen, MunEDA, Research institutes like CEA-LETI, DTU, Fraunhofer Institutes, FZI, IMEC, Offis, Royal Institute of Technology, numerous universities and many more. These projects are supported as part of the sixth and seventh research framework programme (FP6, FP7) of the European Commission or by national research programmes like the Ekompass research programme funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Additional information about latest research results will be presented in numerous sessions of the conference programme (available in print and online at www.date-conference.com) and at the University Booth in the exhibition, highlighting dozens of hardware and software demonstrators.
At DATE´08 detailed information about research projects will be presented at the European Project Booth during the Exhibition (11 - 13 March, 2008), including amongst others the following projects:

Projects funded by the European Commission:
The ATESST project addresses system modeling of automotive embedded systems and defines an Architecture Description Language, EAST-ADL2.

The purpose is to achieve a defacto standard that can complement AUTOSAR regarding abstract and orthogonal aspects such as feature and function definition, requirements, variability and safety.
The DySCAS project addresses self-configurable systems in the context of embedded vehicle electronic systems.

The main objective is the elaboration of fundamental concepts and architectural guidelines, as well as methods and tools for the development of self-configurable systems. The reason is the increasing demand on configurational flexibility and scalability of the systems imposed by future applications which will include simultaneous access to a number of mobile devices and ad-hoc networking with the built-in devices.

The ANGEL project aims at providing methods and tools for building complex heterogeneous systems
in which short-range Wireless Sensor Networks and wired/mobile communication networks cooperate through a dedicated gateway, to monitor and improve quality of life in common habitats, with emphasis on the maintenance of personal health potentiality.

The MNEMEE project addresses the need of modern data-intensive applications in MPSoC embedded systems, which consist of many very complex applications from very different application domains (i.e., communication and multimedia), and will enable their cost-efficient mapping on a multitude of platforms.

The MINAmI project addresses challenges related to the implementation of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) applications, where the personal mobile device acts as a gateway. MINAmI develops an open platform and implements these advanced technologies into demonstrators.

The REALITY project develops design techniques, methodologies, and flows for real-time guaranteed, energy-efficient, robust and self-adaptive SoCs. Tackled technology and design challenges include static variability and rates of devices and interconnects, time-dependent dynamic variability and dynamic fault rates, building reliable systems out of unreliable technology while maintaining design productivity and deploying design techniques that allow technology scaleable, energy efficient SoC systems while guaranteeing real-time performance constraints.

In the Ekompass programme ("Design Platform for Complex Applied Systems and Circuits in Microelectronics") of the German BMBF microelectronics companies, EDA vendors, and research institutes work together, coordinated by the edacentrum, in joint projects addressing EDA solutions with major impact on the competitiveness of the industries, ranging from microelectronics to applications like automotive. At DATE´08 the following projects will be highlighted at the European Project Booth (B10) and by edacentrum (at university booth, B6):

AutoSUN: Design of Automotive Systems with Uncertainties
The project addresses the growing complexity of electronics systems within the automobile industry as well as the required closer cooperation between car manufacturers, suppliers, and semi-conductor companies.

Dionysy: Design Technology for Radio Frequency Systems in Package
The target of the project is the generation of a holistic view on an integrated system including package and radio frequency (RF) parts to enable a fast and mature design of a competitive SiP solution.

HERKULES: Hardware Design Techniques for Zero Defect Design
The main objective of the project is to formally verify a major portion of the communication infrastructure of System-On-Chip (SoC).

MAYA: New Methods for High­Volume Massive Parallel Testing, Yield Learning and High Quality
The project addresses the challenge of exploding effort for testing ICs by developing and integrating innovative technology for capturing data massively in parallel on-chip as well as multisite testing, and fast data processing to off-chip.

Parachute: Parasitic Extraction and Optimisation for Efficient Microelectronic System Design and Application
This project addresses the increasing problem of interference that together with the parasitic effects of new IC processes are affecting the reliability of modern electronic systems.

PRODUKTIV+: Reference System for Measuring Design Productivity of Nanoelectronic Systems
The project aims at a quantitative measure and predictive estimation of design productivity. Based on this, solid project management decision will be enabled and the benefits of EDA investments will be quantified.

Sigma65: Technology­-based Modeling and Analyzing Methods considering Variation in the 65nm Node
The project especially takes the description levels into account that are closely related to the process technologies. Procedures and methods will be developed that describe circuits at a higher level of abstraction based on the distributions of the process and transistor level parameters.

URANOS: Analyzing Methods for Designing Robust Applications of Specific Nano-electronic Systems
The goal of the project is to develop EDA methods for the design of nanoelectronic systems under consideration of incompletely defined operating conditions. The results will lead to a preparation for failure of application specific components in a system and to compensate partial failures on functional level.

VeronA: Verification of Analogue Circuits
The project creates a basis for an automated verification of analogue circuits and systems. Its goal is to develop fundamental elements of an integrated verification methodology for integrated analogue circuits, such that the analogue parts of mixed-signal chips can be verified along with the digital part.

VISION: Distributed Systems and Communication in Automotive, Mobile, and Multi­Computing
As future microelectronic systems migrate towards highly interconnected “systems of systems”, interaction becomes the most critical challenge of the design process. The project provides solutions for the design of tomorrow’s advanced distributed systems in automotive, mobile communication and multicomputing.

DTU Informatics – synthesis of clockless circuits and embedded systems research
Clock-less circuits offer an advantage over synchronous circuits for reaching timing-closure. An EDA tool for synthesis of clock-less circuits, which provides automatic design space exploration targeting the Haste language, and research projects on SoC and embedded systems design will be presented by Technical University of Denmark.

You will find more information about the named projects on the following Websites:

ANGEL: http://www.ist-angel.eu

ATESST: http://www.atesst.org

DTU: http://www.dtu.dk/English.aspx

DySCAS: http://www.dyscas.org

Ekompass: http://www.edacentrum.eu/ekompass/en

MINAml: http://www.fp6-minami.org