The conference opened with a Keynote Session on Monday morning. The keynote speaker was Dr. Peng Ang, Vice President and General Manager of the Consumer Products Division of LSI Logic. He presented a new design paradigm he called ``Applications Optimized ASIC Technology'', which is a system-on-a-chip approach whereby large processing cores are integrated on a single device to create a system. He presented the Sony Playstation video game device as an example.
The technical program was held on monday through wednesday, and the workshops on thursday and friday. The technical program consisted of 85 regular papers presented in 15 sessions, with 3 parallel tracks. On tuesday and wednesday a tutorial track was run in parallel with the paper sessions. Five tutorials were presented, the topics were: ``VHDL Language'', ``Using VHDL for Synthesis'', ``Solid State Image Sensors'', ``Digital Camera Design'', and ``ATM technology and Applications''.
A new session was introduced at this year's conference. On monday afternoon a special general session was made available to exhibitors in which they could give 20 minute presentations on their products. This session was very well received by both exhibitors and attendees. In the exhibit area, 11 companies had booths. All the exhibitors were vendors of CAE tools related to ASIC design. Noticeably absent were Silicon vendors.
The conference banquet was held on Monday evening. The banquet speaker was Dr. Brad Cox of George Mason University, who presented a new paradigm for producing income from software products. He proposed a method for charging for each use of a piece of software, in his talk titled ``Taming the Electronic Frontier''. On Wednesday, David M. Williams director of the Home Media Lab for Intel's Architecture Lab, presented a talk at the conference luncheon titled ``The Soul of A New Medium, Musings On the Information Superhighway''. He presented his view of the internet, past, present and future, and the role that Intel and Pentium based PC's will have in the internet of the future.
The conference Panel Discussion was held Monday evening following the banquet. The topic was ``The Virtual Corporation - Where will you work in the future?''. The panelists were Richard Donze of IBM, Dr. Brad Cox, of George Mason University, and Wayne Spence of TI. A very interactive discussion resulted in the conclusion that communications/computer technology would increase the number of possibilities for how and where people will work.
On Thursday and Friday, seven workshops were presented. Three of the seven offered a ``hands-on'' component, where attendees could use a workstation or PC to interact with software related to the topic presented. The topics were ``AHDL Modeling for Analog and Mixed Signal Top-Down Design'', ``From VHDL to CPDL - A synthesizable Journey'', ``Introduction to VLSI and ASIC Design Tools'', ``Low Power/Low Voltage Design and Technology'', ``DSPIC Synthesis: Architectural Exploration with Minstral2'', ``Practical Formal Verification of ASIC Designs'', and ``ASIC Test Synthesis: A Cost/Benefit Analysis''. Once again the Workshops were an important and valuable part of the ASIC Conference. Mentor Graphics Corporation was a generous host to two of the hands-on workshops, ``Introduction to VLSI and ASIC Design Tools'', and ``DSPIC Synthesis: Architectural Exploration with Minstral2'' at their training facility, nearby the conference site.
The conference proceedings were published by IEEE Publishing Services. The number of pages was 481. The total number of copies printed was 600.
The organizing committee and technical committee are to be congratulated for their efforts in putting together a successful program and the conference.
Submitted by William A. Cook, 1995 ASIC Conference Chair