Technical Program

Technical Program is now LIVE!   Follow the links below to view each days events.

Tradition.  Innovation.  Excellence.

These are words that immediately come to mind when I think of ICCAD.  Tradition and innovation might be seen as contradictory, but as one of the oldest and best-established CAD conferences, ICCAD has a long-standing tradition for cutting-edge innovation as well as technical depth and excellence.  This year is no exception, with continuation of ICCAD's core strengths augmented by constant innovation, expansion, and exploration of the latest directions in CAD.

The heart of ICCAD, of course, is the refereed technical program.  This year, we received almost 350 submissions from 26 countries, and all papers received at least 3 independent reviews, with most papers receiving 4 or more, up to 10 reviews.  The reviewing process is double-blind -- the authors do not know who reviews their papers, and the reviewers do not know who authored each paper.  A strict conflict-of-interest policy prevents technical program committee members from reviewing or even seeing information about papers from themselves or their colleagues. To further promote objective evaluation, we have constructed the area subcommittees such that no two members are from the same organization, nor (with a very few exceptions) were any two recent co-authors.  In the end, we accepted just over 100 papers, and these then underwent a secondary review to make sure the papers you end up seeing are at least as good as the manuscripts that passed the review process.  In addition, the very best papers underwent an additional process to select the winners of the prestigious McCalla Best Paper Awards.  New this year, we are also introducing a Most Influential Paper award, which looks back at ICCAD papers from a decade ago; this award highlights ICCAD's emphasis on profound, lasting research. All of this is to ensure that ICCAD continues its tradition of unparalleled technical excellence.

Complementing the refereed program is a rich variety of invited talks, sessions, and panels.  The conference starts, of course, with the keynote talk, the details of which we are finalizing as the website goes live.  Rest assured that this will be relevant, thought-provoking, and forward-looking.  Throughout the conference, there is an almost continuous track of invited tutorials and special sessions on important, emerging areas -- at any time that you are not attending a technical session of particular relevance to you (or networking in the lobby and hallways), there is sure to be an invited session where you can learn something new.  As in the past few years, the tutorials are embedded in the conference structure and free with your ICCAD registration.  Rounding out the program will be two wonderful panels.  On Monday night, we look to the future by imagining to look backwards:  what will we consider the most important problems and advances in EDA now when we look back from the year 2020?  Wrapping up the conference on Wednesday afternoon, we look forward to an exciting rematch of the explosive panel at DAC on the future of parallel EDA.

Bracketing the main conference program are additional activities on the Sunday before, and the Thursday after.  Because ICCAD attracts key EDA professionals from around the world, Sunday is a popular day for a wide range of privately organized informal and formal meetings.  Sunday also hosts the ACM SIGDA CADathlon -- a student programming contest specifically for CAD programming.  Even if you're not attending any scheduled event, if you're in town by Sunday late afternoon, I recommend wandering around the Doubletree Hotel to see if you'll bump into anyone interesting for dinner.  Thursday is workshop day.  ICCAD provides a supportive incubator for smaller, high-quality, tightly focused meetings.  If there's a workshop that fits your interests, this can be a great place to see the latest, maybe-not-fully-polished results, as well as network with people who share your research interests.  (If there's not a workshop that fits your interest, please consider organizing one for next year!)

I hope I've spread to you some of my excitement about ICCAD, and I hope to see you at the conference!

Alan J. Hu
Program Chair