The Phil Kaufman Award for Distinguished Contributions to EDA honors individuals for their impact on electronic design by their contributions to electronic design automation (EDA). [1] [2] It was established in 1994 by the EDA Consortium (now the Electronic System Design Alliance, a SEMI Technology Community). The IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA) became a co-sponsor of the award. [2] The first Phil Kaufman Award was presented in 1994. [3]
The IEEE has a policy not to issue awards to deceased persons. [3] To honor individuals who made a significant impact on EDA, but died before the award was established the Phil Kaufman Hall of Fame was created by the ESDA in 2020. The first Hall of Fame honor was presented in June 2021. [1] [3] Phil Kaufman awardees are included in the Phil Kaufman Hall of Fame. [2]
Contributions to qualify for the Phil Kaufman Award are evaluated in any of the following categories: [1] [2]
The award was established to honor Phil Kaufman, the deceased former president of Quickturn Systems. [1] [2]
The award is described as the "Nobel Prize of EDA". [4] [5] [6]
All recipients are listed at the ESDA Phil Kaufman Award webpage. [7]
Daisy Systems Corporation, incorporated in 1981 in Mountain View, California, was a computer-aided engineering company, a pioneer in the electronic design automation (EDA) industry.
James E. Solomon is an American engineer and entrepreneur. He has founded four companies, including one of the companies that merged to form the leading chip manufacturing toolmaker Cadence Design Systems. He is an IEEE Fellow and received the industry's Phil Kaufman Award in 1997. Solomon holds 23 patents in integrated chip design.
The Design Automation Conference, or DAC, is an annual event, a combination of a technical conference and a trade show, both specializing in electronic design automation (EDA).
Jingsheng Jason Cong is a Chinese-born American computer scientist, educator, and serial entrepreneur. He received his B.S. degree in computer science from Peking University in 1985, his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1987 and 1990, respectively. He has been on the faculty in the Computer Science Department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) since 1990. Currently, he is a Distinguished Chancellor's Professor and the director of Center for Domain-Specific Computing (CDSC).
Arthur Richard Newton was the dean of the College of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.
Giovanni De Micheli is a research scientist in electronics and computer science. He is credited for the invention of the Network on a Chip design automation paradigm and for the creation of algorithms and design tools for Electronic Design Automation (EDA). He is Professor and Director of the Integrated Systems laboratory at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. Previously, he was Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He was Director of the Electrical Engineering Institute at EPFL from 2008 to 2019 and program leader of the Swiss Federal Nano-Tera.ch program. He holds a Nuclear Engineer degree, a M.S. and a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science under Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli.
Design, Automation & Test in Europe, or DATE is a yearly conference on the topic of electronic design automation. It is typically held in March or April of each year, alternating between France and Germany. It is sponsored by the SIGDA of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Electronic System Design Alliance, the European Design and Automation Association (EDAA), and the IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA). Technical co-sponsors include ACM SIGBED, the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS), IFIP, and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET).
Aart J. de Geus is a co-founder and executive chair of Synopsys Inc., where he was CEO until January 2024.
Chenming Calvin Hu is a Taiwanese-American electronic engineer who specializes in microelectronics. He is TSMC Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the electronic engineering and computer science department of the University of California, Berkeley. In 2009, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers described him as a “microelectronics visionary … whose seminal work on metal-oxide semiconductor MOS reliability and device modeling has had enormous impact on the continued scaling of electronic devices”.
Mary Jane Irwin is an Emerita Evan Pugh Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. She has been on the faculty at Penn State since 1977. She is an international expert in computer architecture. Her research and teaching interests include computer architecture, embedded and mobile computing systems design, power and reliability aware design, and emerging technologies in computing systems.
Rob A. Rutenbar is an American academic noted for contributions to software tools that automate analog integrated circuit design, and custom hardware platforms for high-performance automatic speech recognition. He is Senior Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Pittsburgh, where he leads the university's strategic and operational vision for research and innovation.
Walden C. "Wally" Rhines is an American engineer and businessman. Rhines is President and CEO of Cornami, Inc., a fabless semiconductor company focused on fully homomorphic encryption. Previously, he was President and CEO of Mentor Graphics, a Siemens Business for 23 years and Executive VP of the Semiconductor Group of Texas Instruments for 21 years. Rhines was named overall CEO of the Year by Portland Business Journal in 2012 and Oregon Technology Executive of the Year by the Technology Association of Oregon in 2003. He was named an IEEE Fellow in 2017.
Subhasish Mitra is an American Computer Science and Electrical Engineering professor at Stanford University. He directs the Stanford Robust Systems Group, leads the Computation Focus Area of the Stanford SystemX Alliance, and is a member of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. His research ranges across Robust Computing, NanoSystems, Electronic Design Automation (EDA), and Neurosciences. He teaches EE 108 - digital systems design at Stanford.
Robert W. Dutton is an American electrical engineer. At Stanford University, he is the Robert and Barbara Kleist Professor of Electrical Engineering, Emeritus. Dutton also served as the undergraduate advisor for Stanford University Department of Electrical Engineering, succeeded by John M. Pauly.
Anirudh Devgan is an Indian-American computer scientist and business executive. As a scientist, Devgan is known for his contributions to electronic design automation, specifically circuit simulation, physical design and signoff, statistical design and optimization, and verification and hardware platforms. A fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, he is also member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Vijaykrishnan Narayanan is the A. Robert Noll Chair Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Electrical Engineering, Evan Pugh University Professor and the Associate Dean for Innovation at The Pennsylvania State University. He also serves as the director of the Penn State Center for Artificial Intelligence Foundations and Engineering Systems, and as the interim director of limited submission for the University's Office of the Senior Vice President of Research.
The Electronic System Design Alliance is the international association of companies that provide tools and services for electronic design automation. Until 2016 it was known as the Electronic Design Automation Consortium. In 2018, the ESD Alliance became a SEMI Technology Community.
Lawrence Pileggi is the Coraluppi Head and Tanoto Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a specialist in the automation of integrated circuits, and developing software tools for the optimization of power grids. Pileggi's research has been cited thousands of times in engineering papers.
Luca P. Carloni is a professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University in the City of New York.. He has been on the faculty at Columbia since 2004. He is an international expert on electronic computer-aided design.
Thomas W. Williams was an American engineer, Chief Scientist and fellow at Synopsys. He is known for his contributions to electronic design, automation and testing of electronic systems.