Home

The TAU workshop is a highly interactive and engaging annual gathering of experts in electronic design automation (EDA) of timing, physical, power, electrical, and functional analysis and validation of digital and analog circuits and systems. We invite you all to join us at TAU 2013 to discuss and debate novel ideas and to lead creation of the next generation of EDA tools and methods. Find out what’s hot today and where in EDA research would people like to place their money and resources.

TAU 2013 contest: Variation aware timing analysis

TAU 2013 invites you to participate in a software tool development contest on variation aware parametric timing analysis. With the increasing number and significance of manufacturing and environmental sources of variability in the design and use of modern VLSI designs, timing analysis considering the uncertainty due to variability is essential. At the same time, the growing complexity of modern designs require fast timing analysis, thereby requiring tools to adopt accuracy and run-time tradeoffs. The goals of this contest are the following.

• Motivate university level students to learn about modern VLSI design timing analysis in the presence of variability and encourage research in this area
• Provide insight to some challenging aspects of a "fast" parametric (e.g. statistical) static timing analysis tool, and look for novel solutions, the results of which may be interesting to both industry and academia
• Encourage use of parallel techniques for timing analysis (especially multi-threaded techniques)
• Facilitate creation of a public university level variation aware timer (would serve as a framework for contests in future)

Contestants would be asked to additionally provide a presentation (.ppt or .pdf) describing key novel contributions of their tool.

Important dates

• Contest announced: October 12, 2012
• Early binaries due (for verification/initial feedback): February 1, 2013
• Final version of binaries due with 2 page document describing key novel ideas: February 15, 2013, Extended deadline: February 28, 2013
• Results announced: March 27, 2013 (at TAU workshop)
• [paper] [presentation] [pictures]
  • 1st place - Team IITimer, IIT Madras, India
  • 2nd place - Team HWL timer, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan
  • 3rd place - Team iTimer, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan

Congratulations to all winners (surprise cash awards!) and thanks to all participants for making this successful. The TAU 2013 contest is now officially closed.