EDPS, the Electronic Design Process Symposium, is coming up next Monday. It will be on Thursday, October 3 and Friday, October 4. Once again it will be held at SEMI's offices in Milpitas. I think of it as Gary Smith's conference, since he was always one of the main organizers. He was also the most vociferous about the conference continuing to be held outside Silicon Valley in Monterey. While I used to enjoy the drive down the coast as it was getting light, and dinner in the yacht club, I think it is more practical being in Milpitas.

I always learn something new at EDPS, and I'm sure you will too if you go. For example, EDPS was:

• The first time I ever heard about the RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture.
• The first time I saw someone use differential power analysis to read the encryption keys out of a chip.
• The first time I saw AI being used inside a design tool to steer iterations, and thus avoid "the British Museum Algorithm"—you walk everywhere, and if you don’t walk to the right place, you miss something.

Here's the program for 2019. Both days start with registration and breakfast at 8:00am. You'll spot two themes that run through all the sessions: artificial intelligence, and implementation of systems using advanced packaging.

Thursday, October 3

8:45am: Welcome and Keynote

The opening keynote will be by Rob Aitken, a Fellow at Arm (pictured) on Security and Safety, Especially in Automotive.

10:00am: Innovative Design Techniques

Ellie Burns of Mentor on High-Level Synthesis

Jae-Gyung Ahn of Xilinx on Design for Thermal Reliability in 7nm

Srinivas Bodapati of Intel on AI Chips Everywhere but Where in Chip Design?

Jim Hogan of Vista Ventures will moderate a verification panel.

9/13 UPDATE: the panel will be:

Anthony Hill: CEO and Founder, Adapdix
Adnan Hamid: CEO and Founder, Breker Verification Systems
Gautam Kavipurapu: CEO and Founder, Xceler Systems

12:00pm: Lunch and Keynote

Chris Hotchkiss, VP of the Datacenter Group at Intel (pictured) on Cloud Security

1:30pm: Cyber Security

Nagata Makoto of Kobe University on Side-Channel Attacks

Gang Qu of ISR on Hardware-Based Security

Sohrab Aftabjahani of Intel on AI-Based Security

Zongyao Wen of Synopsys on Security in Standard Interface Protocols

3:45pm Advanced Packaging

Herb Reiter of EDA2ASIC on Transition from Single-Die SoC to Multi-Die System-in-Package

S.B. Park of Binghampton University on Packaging Materials Characterization and Modeling

Timothy McMullen of FormFactor on Advanced Packaging—Changing the World of Wafer Test

Craig Hillman of DfrSolutions/ANSYS on Design for Reliability

6:30pm: Dinner and Keynote

I assume that this will be like last year, and dinner will be brought in to SEMI from a local restaurant.

The dinner keynote will be by Joe Sawicki, EVP of EDA at Mentor (pictured), on...you'll just have to come and find out.

Friday, October 4

8:30am: AI for Design and Manufacturing

Thomas Anderson of Synopsys on Where Are We on the Road to Artificial Intelligence in Chip Design?

Ajay Baranwal of CDLI on Accelerating Semiconductor Manufacturing with Deep Learning

Sanjay Choudhary of NVIDIA on AI-Accelerated Computational Sciences Using Physics and Data-Driven Point Cloud Neural Networks

David Pan of UT Austin on AI-Enabled Agile IC Design and Manufacturing

11:00am: System Reliability for ADAS, AI, 5G, and Photonics

Raanan Gewirtzman of ProteanTecs on A Deep Data Approach to Quality, Reliability, and Time to Market

Georgios Konstandinidis of Google on Circuit Reliability Mitigation Techniques and EDA Requirements

Ravi Mahajan of Intel on Advanced Packaging for Heterogeneous Integration

12:30pm: Lunch and Keynote

The closing keynote will be by Prith Bannerjee, CTO of ANSYS, (pictured) on Use of AI/Machine-Learning in Engineering Simulation and Design.

2:15pm: Wrap Up

Conference chair Ramond Rodriguez of Intel wraps up the meeting with feedback and a discussion on the direction for EDPS 2020.

More Details

More details on the EDPS website. Here is a link for registration. There is a $40 discount if you register before September 20. I'll see you there.

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