Welcome to ICCD ‘98

Welcome to the International Conference on Computer Design 1998 held in Austin, Texas. ICCD encompasses a wide range of topics in the design and implementation of computer systems and their components. ICCD’s multi-disciplinary emphasis provides an ideal environment for developers and researchers to discuss practical and theoretical work covering system and computer architecture, verification and test, design and technology, and tools and methodologies.

To accommodate the new developments in computer design, we consolidated the traditional structure of the conference based on five core tracks: Integrated Systems, Architecture and Algorithms, Design and Technology, Verification and Test, and Tools and Methodology. The number of paper submissions confirm the new conference structure. We received a total of 189 regular papers. Of those, the technical program committee accepted 69 papers to be presented in regular conference sessions. We further included 15 papers to be presented at a special poster session on Monday night.

Murray Campbell, IBM Thomas J. Research Center, will give the Keynote Speech entitled “Deep Blue: The IBM Machine.” This talk presents hardware and software details of the first computer that defeated the World Chess Champion in a historical chess match last year. Three plenary talks will kick-off the conference sessions on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. The first plenary speech entitled “Making Computer-Dependent Airplanes Safer Through Formal Methods” will be given by Ricky Butler from NASA. On the second day, Glenn Hinton from Intel will speak about the practical trade-offs in the design of commercial microprocessors. The title of his plenary talk is “Architects Should Not Write Checks That Design Teams Can’t Cash.” Lucia Lanza from U.S. Venture Partners will be giving the Wednesday plenary speech entitled “The Unbundling of the Semiconductor Industry.”

Three invited sessions present cutting-edge results in the design of microprocessors. The first invited session elaborates on various aspects of the design of a prototype l-GHz PowerPC microprocessor, developed at the IBM Austin Research Laboratory. Three talks will cover details of its circuit design style and the overall design methodology. The second invited session is an in-depth presentation of the latest Alpha microprocessor developed at Compaq Computer Corporation in Hudson, Massachusetts. Four talks disclose information on the overall architecture, the circuit implementation, and the timing and functional verification of the 600 MHz 21264 microprocessor. The third invited session presents four papers on the ARM microprocessor which is a dedicated embedded processor aimed for system on a chip solutions.

The conference includes two panel discussion sessions. In the first panel session, entitled “Formal Verification - Peripheral or Indispensable ?” leading researchers and applicants in the area will discuss the current and future value of formal methods for the design of integrated systems. The title of the second panel session is “Legacy Instruction Sets: Aging Like Fine Wine, or Rusting Like Old Buicks?” Experts from several microprocessor companies will elaborate on the historical instruction set argument. ICCD ‘98 includes two embedded tutorials entitled “Noise and Signal Integrity Issues in Deep Submicron Design” and “Silicon Microsystems - Merging Sensors, Circuits and Systems”.

xv For the first time ICCD hosts two technical forum sessions, a combination of an embedded tutorial and a panel discussion. In each forum, several presentations given by experts in the field are followed by a general discussion with the audience. The first forum entitled “Technology Challenges for Design and Computer-Aided Design of Digital Integrated Circuits” reviews the effects that changes in technology such as SO1 devices, copper wires, and low dielectric insulators are having on design and CAD. The second technical forum elaborates on the latest trends in the application of programmable logic devices. It is entitled “Dynamically and Partially Reconfigurable Architectures: New Opportunities and Challenges”.

We would like to thank the Technical Program Committee, the Organizing Committee, the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, the IEEE Computer Society for their support and contributions to the conference. Special thanks to all the authors, speakers, session chairs, and the audio-visual team, who make the conference what it is. We wish all attendees a productive and enjoyable conference.

Bing Sheu, General Chair Andreas Kuehlmann, Technical Program Chair

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