Seminar on VLSI Design Automation by Prof. Marcelo Johann

Prof. Marcelo Johann from the Institute of Informatics of Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul will give a seminer about VLSI Design Automation, on October 2,2013, 3:40 pm in EF 513.

Abstract

A key factor that enabled the development of the microelectronics industry was the creation of sophisticated software tools for design automation. The tremendous evolution of manufacturing capacity was primarily fuelled by scaling down the transistors. Thus, besides being possible to integrate an increasing number of devices, they have also become increasingly faster. However, this wonderful manufacturing capacity would be of little use if it were not possible for human designers to specify the different functions, structures and physical characteristics of highly complex projects in a progressively more efficient way. That is why the most traditional design problems such as placement, routing, gate sizing, are still hot topics today. In the last years, all these subjects regained a lot of attention and experimented significant, sometimes radical, advancements. In this talk we review basic concepts at the definition of such problems, which in general require combinatoric optimization, and cover some of the most important achievements in placement and routing in the last decade. They were made possible by the combined effort of industry and academia with the release of realistic benchmark sets and the promotion of several research contests. Finally, we can better understand some of the current challenges that must be faced to keep pace with the next big designs, highlighting the relevance of research in this area.

Short Bio

Marcelo de Oliveira Johann (Member of IEEE, AES, ICMA) received his Bachelor (5-years), Masters and the Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), at Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1992, 1994 and 2001, respectively, having spent 6 months as a visiting student at UCLA, USA, in 1997. He worked as a professor at the Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) from 2000 to 2002, and is a full-time professor at UFRGS since 2003. Dr. Johann co-authored 6 book chapters and published more than 35 conference papers in topics related to Computer Aided Design of ICs. His research interests include algorithms for placement, routing, discrete gate sizing, combinatorial optimization, and his activities include also teaching digital design, compilers, operating systems and computer music.