People September 29, 2005 ************************************ A Lifetime of Contribution ... * On his 65th birthday, Hugo De Man festively ends his career as a professor at the Catholic University of Leuven and as a Senior Fellow of IMEC. Hugo De Man was born on September 19, 1940 in Boom, Belgium. Exactly 65 years later he is honoured with an emeritus status for his scientific achievements as well as his impact on industry. His research was published in more than 150 international journal papers and almost 440 international refereed conference papers. He has won numerous awards, including eight best-paper awards; one best-circuit award; the Phil Kaufman Award from the EDA Consortium (1999); the Golden Jubilee Medal of the IEEE Circuits and System Society for "exceptional contributions toward advancing circuits and systems society goals during its 50 years of existence" (1999); and two lifetime-achievement awards, one from the European Design Automation Association (2004) and one from the European Electronics Industry (2004). Hugo De Man earned a degree in electrical engineering in 1964 and a PhD degree in Applied Sciences in 1968, both from the University of Leuven. In 1968 he became a member of the staff of the University of Leuven, working on device physics and integrated circuit technology. From 1969 to 1971 he was with the Electronic Research Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley, as an ESRO-NASA Postdoctoral Research Fellow, working on Computer-Aided Device and Circuit Design. In 1971 he returned to the University of Leuven as a Research Associate of the NFWO (Belgian National Science Foundation). In 1974 he became a Full Professor at the University of Leuven. In 1975 he was visiting professor at UC Berkeley, teaching IC design and device physics. From 1984 to 1995 he was Vice-President of the VLSI systems design group of IMEC (Leuven, Belgium). Since 1995 he has been a Senior Research Fellow of IMEC, responsible for research in system design technologies. Hugo De Man is an IEEE Fellow and a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Belgium. "Hugo's mission was always to bring universities and industry closer together. He not only realized this within IMEC but he also spread the word worldwide in numerous remarks and keynote speeches," said Gilbert Declerck, President and CEO, IMEC. "From the start of his career, he was convinced that research and education go hand-in-hand. He found training of people in design automation as important as doing research in this field, because research results only lead to industrial impact while designers actually use the tools once they have them. Today, more than ever Hugo is fascinated by the fundamental limitations that physics and technology bring to circuit design. He is known worldwide for his statement challenging the industry to bridge the gap between process and design engineers. In saying this, he has brought a shift in the way industry is looking to solve design bottlenecks. Based on his expertise in circuit design and physics, he started to bring both worlds together to learn to speak each other's language. We are very grateful for Hugo's remarkable achievements, and we are also very fortunate to have Hugo still with us as a consultant and as an ambassador for the university and for IMEC in the coming years.¨ ************************************ Building consensus ... * The Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2) announced the formation of the Open Modeling Coalition (OMC) to address issues such as accuracy, consistency, security, and process variations in the characterization and modeling of libraries and IP blocks used for the design of ICs. Si2 says the underlying problems and inconsistencies in current library representations were presented in an open industry meeting at DAC in June 2005. As a result of that meeting and positive industry feedback, Si2 says it has decided to proceed with the program. Si2 member companies participating in the OMC include: ARM, Cadence Design Systems, IBM, Intel, LSI Logic, Magma Design Automation, Philips Semiconductor, Renesas Technology Corp., Silicon Navigator, ST Microelectronics, Sun Microsystems, and Virage Logic. Other companies are invited to participate in this pioneering project. The OMC technical objectives are to define a consistent modeling and characterization environment in support of both static and dynamic library representations for improved integration and adoption of advanced library features and capabilities, such as statistical timing. The system will support delay modeling for library cells, macro-blocks and IP blocks, and provide increased accuracy to silicon for 90nm and 65nm technologies, while being extensible to future technology nodes. Technology contributions from Cadence Design Systems, IBM, Magma Design Automation, Synopsys, and other companies are in support of these goals. The initial OMC Working Groups (WG) are addressing the following proposed library standards: ECSM Change Management: Supporting the static approach, this group is responsible for evolution of the Effective Current Source Model (ECSM) library format. Data Model Consistency: Supporting the dynamic approach, this group addresses the interface between the Open Modeling Coalition and the OpenAccess Coalition. Statistical Timing: This group is defining semantic extensions to the static representation, the APIs and information model needed to support one or more recommended means for statistical timing analysis. Characterization Data: This group handles the technical definitions and concerns associated with providing all the required characterization information from the submitted characterization engines to the modeling engine. Kudos to Si2 … ************************************ New Business Cards ... * Aprio Technologies announced the appointment of two new members to its technology advisory board, Chris Mack, former Vice President of Lithography Technology for KLA-Tencor, and Michael Orshansky, Assistant Professor in the ECE Department at U.T. Austin. Chris Mack was Founder, President and CTO of FINLE Technologies, acquired by KLA-Tencor in February 2000. Mack is also an adjunct faculty member in the ECE Department and ChemE Department at UT Austin. In 2003, Dr. Mack received the SEMI Award for North America. Michael Orshansky is a recipient of the 2004 National Science Foundation CAREER award, and is currently doing research in various IC design and technology areas including statistical analysis and optimization for DFM and yield improvement, techniques for robust circuit design in nanometer scale CMOS technologies, and statistical technology modeling and characterization. Previously Dr. Orshansky worked at AMD and eSilicon. * Bluespec, Inc. announced that Bob Iannucci, Senior Vice President and Head of the Nokia Research Center, has joined Bluespec’s Board of Directors He was named senior vice president and head of Nokia’s Research Center, a unit that employs 1,200 researchers and operates in six countries, on January 1st, 2005. Iannucci is responsible for all strategic and long-term research for Nokia. Before joining Nokia, Iannucci was an executive at CoSine Communications, at Compaq Computer Corp., a co-founder of Exa Corp., and served in various R&D roles at IBM. Dr. Iannucci is a senior member of the IEEE and a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He is the author/coauthor of two books, has written several academic papers, and holds five patents. * Mentor Graphics Corp. announced the appointment of Arun Arora as Vice President and Corporate Treasurer. Previously, Arora was an executive with Verari Systems, and prior to that an executive with Sun Microsystems. Arora also served at Credit Suisse First Boston and Goldman Sachs. He has a BS in Business Administration from the University of Kansas and an MBA from Harvard University. * Tharas Systems, Inc. announced the appointment of Dan Hafeman to Senior Vice President of Engineering. Per the Press Release: ¨¨Dan joins Tharas with 18 years of experience at Ikos Systems where he engineered ground-breaking hardware acceleration and emulation systems. As vice president of engineering, Dan developed hardware acceleration products. As its CTO he pioneered co-modeling based verification, and lead the company into in-circuit emulation. Mentor Graphics acquired Ikos Systems in 2002. Hafeman has an MSCE from Stanford, has been awarded 3 patents in accelerated simulation, and has co-authored 2 pending patents in advanced emulation technologies.¨¨ ************************************ New members & awards ... * Open Core Protocol International Partnership (OCP-IP) announced that CoWare and MIPS Technologies, Inc. are joint winners of the Outstanding Contributor of the Year Award for 2005. Per the Press Release: ¨¨CoWare was acknowledged for contributions in the OCP-IP System Level Design Working Group. The Company made key contributions to the development of the SystemC Transaction Level Monitor (TLM) Channel version 2.1.1 and the methodology white paper, ´OCP TLM for Architectural Modeling.¨ The new features in version 2.1.1 improve model interoperability, resulting in better productivity in system level modeling.¨¨ Also per the Press Release: ¨¨MIPS Technologies is recognized for its work in the OCP-IP Specification Working Group, in particular for its contributions in the area of out-of-order tagging. Tagging provides the ability for interconnect and targets to re-order transactions for non-conflicting memory addresses within a single thread. Unlike threads, which enforce no ordering restrictions, tagged transactions ensure that read/write hazards are respected by the system. Tagged transactions are particularly attractive for advanced embedded CPU architectures, like the MIPS32 24K processor core family, which can exploit the parallelism offered by out-of-order transaction processing, but require consistent memory ordering. * OCP-IP also announced that the SoC Technology Center (STC) of the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) – a non-profit R&D organization in Taiwan – has joined OCP-IP. Explicitly, ¨¨The addition of STC/ITRI to the membership roster illustrates the tremendous momentum, support, and adoption OCP-IP is enjoying throughout Asia. Chein-Wei Jen, the General Director of STC/ITRI, is quoted: “In order to respond to increasing demands in developing IP's and various SoC designs, STC joined OCP-IP to be part of a worldwide technical forum that enables the Taiwan industry keep abreast of the global market.” ************************************ New relationships ... * Arithmatica, Inc. announced it has expanded its sales network to Europe through a relationship Ben Franklin, LLC, based in Munich. Ben Franklin LLC will represent Arithmatica in Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria and Russia. ************************************ Academic initiatives ... * Synopsys, Inc. announced that Syracuse University is the recipient of a Charles Babbage Grant from Synopsys and Sun Microsystems, Inc. The Charles Babbage Grant provides Synopsys tools with partner hardware to specific American and international universities, which are involved in improving teaching and advancing research with EDA tools. The grant is named after British mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage, who designed and built mechanical computing machines on principles that anticipated the modern electronic computers of today over 150 years ago. Syracuse is among the first universities to receive this grant. Synopsys and Sun say Syracuse will receive 30 Sun workstations and 50 Synopsys EDA University Tool Package software and licenses, along with curriculum support and Synopsys AE assistance with installation of licenses and training. Faculty and students have worked with Synopsys in the past and have served as a beta site for curriculum development and research projects. Hence, Syracuse is now incorporating the Synopsys tools into all the digital design courses in the CE program within the EECS Department. Carlos Hartmann, Chair of the EECS Department at Syracuse, is quoted: "Syracuse University is grateful for this generous grant from Synopsys and Sun. We look forward to using these state-of-the-art EDA tools and hardware to produce the best trained engineers in the world."
Rich Goldman, Vice President for Strategic Market Development at Synopsys and a BSCS graduate from Syracuse, is also quoted: "We know that design challenges become harder every year and our goal is to help prepare students to meet these challenges. We are dedicated to promoting academia, and are always looking for ways to encourage and educate students in the important field of IC design."
It doesn´t get any better than that … ************************************ Leading the way ... Paraphrasing the Press Release: * IMEC in Belgium and TNO in the Netherlands have announced the creation of The Holst Centre, a new research center set to develop future generations of wireless autonomous transducer solutions and systems-in-foil. The center is named after Gilles Holst, a Dutch pioneer in research and development and first director of Philips Research. Philips has committed to become the first industrial partner. Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, Dutch minister of economic affairs and Fientje Moerman, Belgium's Flemish minister of economics, science and innovation, have given the go-ahead for the new Holst Centre to be located at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Brinkhorst says The Netherlands has already committed EUR 12.5 million to complete the first phase of the cooperation agreement. The Holst Centre will begin with 75 employees. The Holst Centre will start with two strategic program initiatives. IMEC will lead the wireless autonomous transducer solutions initiative. The system-in-foil research and development initiative will be managed by TNO. The Holst Centre will operate as a program organization, offering industries research based on well-defined roadmaps. Companies, institutes and universities around the world are invited to collaborate in the two program initiatives of the Holst Centre. Within the Holst Centre, IMEC will expand its current research for wireless autonomous microsystems with focus on ultra-low-power radio; ultra-low-power signal processing; micro-power generation, storage and management; sensor and actuator technology. TNO has built expertise around the industrialization of microsystems and polymer electronics, which it will contribute to the Holst Centre. In the Holst Centre, capabilities in the fields of printing of polymers, large-area deposition and structuring of thin layers and design of device architectures will be further developed. The Centre will use these capabilities to create and demonstrate 'sensing and acting surfaces', large-area, thin-layered products such as organic lighting and signage, sensor tags and organic electronics. It is recognized by major industrial players that intensive cooperation in an open innovation spirit is essential for successful long-term, cost-effective research and future product innovation. Interaction and cooperation with both academia and the industry, including small- and medium-sized enterprises, enables the Holst Centre to tune its scientific strategy to the long-term corporate product strategies of its partners. A beneficial transfer of technology to the industry is guaranteed and market requirements can be anticipated. Some industrial and university partners have already expressed their intention to participate such an R&D-collaboration. Cooperation as a key to the future … |