2004 ACM/IEEE TAU Workshop

on Timing Issues in the Specification and Synthesis of Digital Systems

 

Renaissance Austin Hotel, Austin, Texas

February 2-3, 2004

www.tauworkshop.com

 

Sponsored by ACM/SIGDA and IEEE Circuits and Systems Society

Additional support from Cadence, IBM, Intel, and Magma Design Automation


 

FINAL PROGRAM

 

 

 

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 2

 

8:45 – 9:45 am Welcome and Keynote

Host: C. Alpert/IBM

 

Keynote Address: Jim Kahle (IBM)

 

The Myth of the optimal FO4

This talk will summarize the performance parameters that guide effective microprocessor design and review the role of frequency tuning and goals towards achieving design closure. In practice, designing to an FO4 has been a good rule of thumb, but as technology scales, many factors erode its effectiveness.  For example, FO4 does not capture wire delays and back-end scaling. New rules of thumb measurements for achieving timing goals need to be established that  capture the deep sub-micron effects of today’s designs.

This talk will also reflect on recent work on optimal pipeline structures and show how technology and
power limitations will change these optimizations in the future.   New technology directions will continue to drive next-generation microprocessors.

           

9:45 – 10:10 am Break

 

10:10 am – noon Statistical Timing Topics

Chair: D. Blaauw (Michigan)

 

Fast Computation of Circuit Delay Probability Distribution for Timing Graphs with Arbitrary Node Correlations

M. Orshansky (UT-Austin)

 

First-Order Parameterized Block-Based Statistical Timing Analysis

C. Visweswariah, K. Ravindran, K. Kalafala (IBM)

 

Statistical Gate Sizing to Increase Timing Yield

S. Raj, S. Vrudhula, J. Wang (U-Arizona)

 

The Count of Monte Carlo

L. Scheffer (Cadence)

 

 

Noon – 1:30 pm Lunch

 

1:30 – 3:20 pm Topics in Timing
Chair: S. Hassoun (Tufts)

 

A Fast Oracle for Interconnect Delay Prediction

C. Alpert (IBM), J. Hu (Texas A&M), S. Sapatnekar (Minnesota), C-N. Sze

 

Synchronous Wave Pipelining for High Throughput Interconnect System

L. Zhang; Y. Hu; C.C.P. Chen (Wisconsin)

 

Advanced Waveform Models for the Nanometer Regime

S.R. Nassif, E. Acar (IBM)

 

Model Order Reduction Techniques for Linear Systems with Large Numbers of Terminals

P. Feldmann, F. Liu (IBM)          

 

3:20 – 3:50 pm Break

 

3:50 – 5:20 pm Focus Group Discussions

Chair: D. Sylvester (Michigan)

 

Topics:

1. Statistical Static Timing Analysis and Optimization: Sizzle or Fizzle?

(Group lead: C. Visweswariah)

2. Impact of Power/ground Noise on Timing

 (Group lead: S. Nassif)

3. Buffering Resource Requirements due to Scaling (Group lead: D. Kirkpatrick)

4. Most Significant Timing Contributions + TAU 2009 Predictions (Group lead: TBD)

 

(Including brief reports from Groups 2-4)

 

6:30 – 9:30 pm Dinner

"Fun and Games at Dave & Busters" - Taxis leave from the Renaissance hotel lobby at 6:30

 

 

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 3

 

8:45 – 10:00 am Is Statistical Timing Useful?

Chair: F. Dartu (Intel)
 

Achieving Frequency in a High Performance Microprocessor: Why Statistical Timing is not on my Tools Wish List (invited)

C. Anderson (IBM)

 

Probabilistic and Variation-Tolerant Design: Key to Continued Moore's Law Scaling (invited)

T. Karnik (Intel)

 

Focus Group 1 Report: SSTA/Optimization: Sizzle or Fizzle?

 

10:00 – 10:30 am Break

 

10:30 am – noon Advanced Delay Modeling

Chair: S. Nassif (IBM)

 

Modelling Flip-Flop Delay Dependencies in Timing Analysis

A.M. Jain, D. Blaauw (Michigan)

 

Timed Input Pattern Generation for Delay Calculation under Simultaneous Switching

S.H. Choi (Purdue), F. Dartu (Intel), K. Roy

 

False Coupling Exploration in Timing Analysis

K. Tseng (Cadence), M. Horowitz (Stanford)

 

Noon – 1:30 pm Lunch

 

1:30 – 2:50 pm Cell-level Delay Models

Chair: L. Scheffer (Cadence)

 

Towards More Accurate Cell Modeling (invited)

G. Rao (Magma)

 

Cell-Level Models are Hopelessly Inadequate (invited)

K. Tseng (Cadence)

 

Cell-Level Models are Accurate and Essential (invited)

B. Mullen (Synopsys)


2:50 – 3:20 pm Break

 

3:20 pm – 5:10 pm Interconnect-Driven Timing Issues
Chair: V. Zolotov (Motorola)

 

A Robust Cell-Level Crosstalk Delay Change Analysis

I. Keller, K. Tseng, N. Verghese (Cadence)

 

Worst-Case RLC Noise with Timing Window Constraints

J. Chen, L. He (UCLA)

 

An Efficient Merging Scheme for Clock Routing with General Skew Targets

R. Chaturvedi, J. Hu (Texas A&M)

 

Integrity-Driven Power and Signal Network Codesign

J. Xiong, L. He (UCLA)

 

5:10 pm Closing Remarks

 

 

 

TAU Organization

 

General Chair: C. J. Alpert (IBM)

Program Chairs: L. Scheffer (Cadence), D. Sylvester (Michigan)

Program Committee: D. Blaauw (Michigan), L. Chen, F. Dartu (Intel), V. Kariat (Cadence), S. Hassoun (Tufts), C. Kashyap (Flex-Logic), D. Kirkpatrick (Intel), K. Kucukcakar (Synopsys), L. Pileggi (Carnegie-Mellon), V. Rao (IBM), S. S. Sapatnekar (Minnesota), M. Singh (UNC), H. Zhou (Northwestern), V. Zolotov (Motorola)