Panel: the heritage of Mead & Conway: what has remained the same, what was missed, what has changed, what lies ahead

Abstract

Thirty-two years ago, Electronics Magazine honored Carver Mead and Lynn Conway with its Achievement Award for their contributions to VLSI chip design. The 'Mead & Conway methods' were being taught at 100+ universities all over the world, and not only have helped spawn a common design culture so necessary in the VLSI era, but have greatly increased interaction between university and industry so as to stimulate research by both. Concepts such as simplified design methods, new, electronic representations of digital design data, scalable design rules, 'clean' formalized digital interfaces between design and manufacturing, and widely accessible silicon foundries suddenly enabled many thousands of chip designers to create many tens of thousands of chip designs. Today, as Moore's Law -- a term coined by Carver Mead -- has brought as from 10 microns to 10 nanometers, what is the heritage of Mead & Conway?UCB Professor Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli will moderate an industry and research panel, to discuss what has remained the same, what was missed, what has changed, and what lies ahead.