ACM-SIGDA
35 Years of Design Automation
A Retrospective and a Look Forward
Preface
The semiconductor industry has experienced phenomenal growth over the last few decades. During this period of growth, minimum feature sizes have decreased on average by 14% per year from 3um in 1980 to 0.18um in 1999, die area have increased by 13% per year, and design complexity (as measured by number of transistors on a chip) has increased at an annual growth rate of 50% for DRAMs and 35% for microprocessors. Performance enhancements have been equally impressive. For example, clock frequencies for leading-edge microprocessors have increased by more than 30% per year.
The semiconductor industry has maintained its growth by achieving 25~30% per year cost reduction per function over the past 35 years. This productivity growth in integrated circuits has been made possible through technological advances in device manufacturing and packaging, circuits and architectures, and design methodologies and tools.
The semiconductor industry is now at a critical junction where it appears that an unprecedented number of distinct technical challenges threaten the continuation of Moore's Law. A few of these formidable challenges are the "100 nm and below lithography", "GHz operation frequency on- and off- chip", "microWatt power dissipation per MIPS", and "design productivity improvement at a rate of 50% or more per year:. It is thus timely to discuss the key technologies that could help us meet these challenges.
Computer aided design tools and flows have played a critical role in maintaining the growth and productivity of the semiconductor industry. The tasks of providing the history and review of major milestones and achievements of the electronic design automation (EDA) industry as well as giving a perspective on the future of the EDA industry and the grand challenges facing the industry today and in near future were addressed in a special session of the 35th Design Automation Conference (DAC) entitled: "Thirty-Five Years of Design Automation - A Retrospective and a Look Forward". A multimedia CDROM is produced here to capture and present this session to the public.
I would like to thank the following individuals for their sponsorship and support of this project and providing valuable feedback after reviewing the first draft of the monograph: the SIGDA Advisory Board especially Nikil Dutt, Steven Levitan, Bryan Preas, and Robert Walker, the 35th DAC Executive Committee, Lisette Burgos of ACM, and finally Kathy Preas who did the cover design and CD-ROM publication.
This Monograph is the result of many weeks of hard work by my students, Tien-Ying Kuo and Cheng-Ta Hsieh at the University of Southern California. Without their dedication and attention to details, none of this would have been possible. Many thanks to both of them for doing an outstanding job.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the DAC presenters, panelists and panel moderators who spent time and effort preparing and presenting at the 35th DAC and providing me with the electronic documents for their slides.
Massoud Pedram
Los Angeles, California
May 1999