The NTUgs Team Led by Prof. Yao-Wen Chang of NTU Department of Electrical Engineering Won the First Prize from 2012 ACM ISPD International Contest, the Sixth Time Receiving the Honor of the World Top Prize

The NTUgs team led by Professor Yao-Wen Chang of NTU Department of Electrical Engineering won the first prize from 2012 ACM ISPD International Contest (2012 ACM ISPD Discrete Gate Sizing Contest). The team members include the Ph. D. students as the followings: Kuan-Hsien Ho, Yu-Chen Chen, Po-Ya Hsu. Their outstanding performance made another academic honor for National Taiwan University.

The annual ACM ISPD Discrete Gate Sizing Contest has been holding for years by the most influential institute in this field: ACM (Association for Computing Machinery). The contest results have just been announced in the annual ACM International Symposium on Physical Design, ACM ISPD. The 2012 ACM ISPD in Napa Valley, the United States is the 21st contest over the past eight years. ACM ISPD has long been considered the most influential contest with the great honor in the field of electronic design automation. And it appears the top research teams around the world to participate in each year. Over the past years, the topics in the contests have been focusing on the current issue in the industry of electronic design automation, ranged from placement both in the years of 2005 and 2006, the global routing in the years of 2007 and 2008, clock network synthesis in 2009 and 2010 to the topic of routability-driven placement in 2011 in hopes that they can figure out the total solutions for the difficult part of mechanic designs in this current industry. Those contest topics have successfully led the research interests related to the field of electronic design automation along with the high attention from both educational institutes and the corporations in this industry. This international contest has been reporting and covering by the most influential press in this field: EE Times. The 2012 ACM ISPD Discrete Gate Sizing Contest was just held with the topic provided by the world top semi-conductor company, Intel Corporation. They announced the topic last October and provided the testing circuit last December. The contest results from the software system designed by all the research teams were just announced via the platform of ISPD this march.

The topic of the 2012 ACM ISPD Discrete Gate Sizing Contest focused on the development of the best software system for IC (integrated circuit) size in order to make it compatible to the well-functioned condition for processing a normal integrated circuit, such as load capacitance, clock network, voltage change, and so on, in hopes that they can find the best material size of the lowest leakage power according to the size of each changeable material. As for the design for integrated circuit, it is required and crucial to make sure that the circuit can be operated under the condition of being at the expected speed. In order to operate the circuit well in the long run, each signal is under the strictest regulation for the best performance. Take a regular chip inserted in the regular smart phone for example; they have to make sure that the millions of the signals can be processed within a specific range of time under a well-functioned condition. In addition to that, lowering the leakage power is expected under the condition of a well-functioned integrated circuit. The percentage of the leakage power affect the battery and the function of all kinds of electronic devices; in other words, it makes the sustainability works well as long as the leakage power can be reduced definitely. According to the report in EE Times last May, the leakage power takes a huge percentage of the total consumption of the circuit chip, between 30% and 50%, and the percentage is getting higher year by year. Consequently, it is the crucial part to reduce the leakage power for the sustainability of electronic devices. The topic of the the 2012 ACM ISPD Discrete Gate Sizing Contest focused on the development of the best software system for IC (integrated circuit) size, in hopes that the researchers can find the best material size of the lowest leakage power according to the size of each changeable material in order to sustain the use of battery and the electronic devices. The ultimate goal is to meet the needs of the consumers to satisfy their use of smart phones, laptop, and all kinds of electronic devices.

There were 32 research teams around the world participating the 2012 ACM ISPD Discrete Sizing Contest, including top universities from Asia, North America, South America, and Europe, making it a record with the most research teams this year. The 2012 ACM ISPD Discrete Gate Sizing Contest was just held with the topic provided by the world top semi-conductor company, Intel Corporation. The NTUgs team led by Professor Yao-Wen Chang of NTU Department of Electrical Engineering, with Kuan-Hsien Ho, Yu-Chen Chen, Po-Ya Hsu as the team members won the first prize this year. The NTUgs team made it possible to lower the most leakage power (66%) of the testing circuit provided by Intel Corporation for the 2012 ACM ISPD Discrete Gate Sizing Contest. The NTUgs team successfully safe the most energy by sustaining the battery and the inserted chips of the electronic devices and hence won the greatest honor of the 2012 ACM ISPD Discrete Gate Sizing Contest. The other winners are research teams from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil (the second place), Ching Hua University and Missouri University of Science and Technology in the United States (the third place), and the forth place goes to University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in the United States.

The champion from 2012 ACM ISPD Discrete Gate Sizing Contest is the sixth honor that Professor Yao-Wen Chang has already received over the past six years in the field of international IC design contests, making Professor Yao-Wen Chang the top researcher to the whole world. This international contest has been reporting and covering by the most influential press in this field: EE Times. To be noted, the NTUgs team has been reported by EE Times six times over the past six years, marking National Taiwan University the dominant researcher in the field of IC design. The NTUgs team won the third place from the 2006 ACM ISPD Contest, the second place from the ISPD Contest, the first place in 2009, and the second place from the 2010 ISPD Contest. Moreover, they won the first place from the first held IEEE CEDA PATMOS Contest along with the topic of timing analysis in 2011.