Keynote Speakers

Abstract.
Virtually all digital IC platforms today are based on flexible programmable processor cores, with a trend towards Multi/Manycore architectures comprising 10-100 cores. This trend is imposed by high performance and power/energy efficiency demands. Specifically in competitive embedded application domains like smartphones, wireless infrastructure, and automotive, there are tight efficiency constraints on power, energy, timing, design cost, and production cost of the underlying HW platforms. The need for flexibility and efficiency leads to heterogeneous platform architectures, composed of off-the-shelf (yet partially customizable) IP cores, like RISCs, and custom application-specific processors, such as DSP or security accelerators. Moreover, these cores communicate over complex on-chip interconnect and memory subsystem architectures. These trends impose huge challenges for ICT system and semiconductor industry. Novel design methodologies and tools are required for managing the skyrocketing HW platform design complexity, while simultaneously optimizing systems and components for performance, power, and costs. Furthermore, migrating legacy application code or firmware as well as developing and debugging new software for highly parallel HW platforms causes a significant embedded SW productivity gap. This talk presents various advanced system-level design methodologies in a practice-oriented way and also provides an outlook on upcoming HW security issues.

Rainer Leupers received the M.Sc. (Dipl.-Inform.) and Ph.D. (Dr. rer. nat.) degrees in Computer Science with honors from TU Dortmund in 1992 and 1997. From 1997-2001 he was the chief engineer at the Embedded Systems chair at TU Dortmund. In 2002, he joined RWTH Aachen University as a professor for Software for Systems on Silicon. His research comprises software development tools, processor architectures, and system-level electronic design automation, with focus on application-specific multicore systems. He published numerous books and technical papers and served in committees of the leading international EDA conferences. He received various scientific awards, including Best Paper Awards at DAC and twice at DATE, as well as several industrial awards. Dr. Leupers is also engaged as an entrepreneur and in turning novel technologies into innovations. He holds several patents on system-on-chip design technologies and has been a co-founder of LISATek (now with Synopsys), Silexica, and Secure Elements. He has served as consultant for various companies, as an expert for the European Commission, and in the management boards of large-scale projects like HiPEAC and UMIC. He is the coordinator of EU projects TETRACOM and TETRAMAX on academia/industry technology transfer.