A D&T Roundtable: Design Automation in Europe

Electronic system design automation is becoming the enabling technology in several key domains, including the mobile telecommunications, consumer, and automotive industry segments. European authorities realize that leading-edge companies in these industries must develop strong research and development in system design to maintain their leading positions. This is why the authorities ore heavily funding cooperation between industries and universities through a 2,000-million-euro (US$2,200 million) prolect called MEDEA (MicroEIectronics Development for European Applications). The goal is to master new electronic system design automation technologies, including hardware-software codesign and mixed analog/digital systems. In this roundtable, representatives of academia, industry, and European organizations evaluate the existing technologies and predict their future. The roundtable was held last March at the internotionol conference on Design and Test in Europe (DATE99) in Munich. IEEE Design & Test thanks roundtable participants Joseph Borel (STMicroelectronics), Anton Souer (MEDEA Office), Wolfgang Rosenstiel (University of Tuebingen), Frank Ghenossio (STMicroelectronics), and Ernest0 Perea (STMicroelectronics) D&Tgrotefully acknowledges the help of Ahmed Jerraya (TIMA), and Soman Adham (LogicVision) and Adam Osseiron (Fluence), who helped organize the roundtable and acted as recorders. Special thanks go to the Design Automation Test in Europe (DATE) Conference for hasting the roundtable. reversed: 80% of the modules change and only 20%) are reused. Compared with GO% increased process capabilities each year, we achieve only a 20% increase in design efficiency. We call this the process-design gap.