Carver A. Mead
1996 Phil Kaufman Award Honoree
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SAN JOSE, Calif.--November 13, 1996--The Electronic Design Automation Companies (EDAC) today announced the winner of its 1996 Phil Kaufman Award -- Carver A. Mead. Professor Mead received the Phil Kaufman Award on November 12, 1996, during EDAC's 1996 membership dinner at the Hyatt Sainte Claire Hotel, San Jose, CA.

Carver Mead is the Gordon and Betty Moore Professor of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. This Award honors Professor Mead for his innovative contributions to design tool technology of benefit to electronic systems and IC designers.

According to Dr. Walden (Wally) C. Rhines, president and CEO of Mentor Graphics and EDAC's chairman, "EDAC's Phil Kaufman Award honors those who have made significant contributions to design tool technology. Carver Mead is one of these innovators. This Award honors his work and contributions in the area of VLSI design. His structured design approach to VLSI design defined a new methodology for chip development. This methodology was the primary reason behind design productivity increasing so rapidly throughout the 1980s."

Will Herman, president of Viewlogic, and nominator of this year's winner noted, "Carver Mead deserves the Phil Kaufman Award because of his significant contributions to EDA. His EDA work was the result of his involvement in most of the defining events in the invention and development of semiconductor physics, engineering and fabrication techniques. He was also a key contributor to the efforts of many early CPU design teams. His research and methodology have improved the way our community approaches design."

Richard Newton, a member of EDAC's Phil Kaufman Award Nominating committee, added, "Carver Mead's broad and distinguished career, has always found him at the very leading edge of a topic, from dielectrics to scaling theory, from VLSI design methodology to neural networks. He has inspired many generations of researchers, but is perhaps best known in the microelectronics field for his contributions to VLSI design methodology."

"EDA is at least as much about design methodology and about approaches to design, as it is about tools and software. Carver Mead's contributions in the fields of structured design, from the device level to system architecture, are unparalleled."

"Carver Mead inspired a generation of system designers to work directly with silicon. By making silicon accessible to system designers, via simple design abstractions at all levels, system designers were able to bridge the gap to direct silicon implementation. Many of the silicon-based industries of today can trace their origins to the influence of Carver Mead's insights and design approaches."

EDAC's Award is named in honor of EDA industry pioneer Phil Kaufman, who turned innovative technologies like silicon compilation and emulation into businesses that have greatly benefited electronic designers. Previous award winners are Don Pederson, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley, CA; and Herman Gummel of Bell Labs (Murray Hill, NJ).

For more information about the Phil Kaufman Award contact: EDAC, Phil Kaufman Award, 111 West Saint John St., Suite 200, San Jose, CA 95113, 408-287-3322, Fax: 408-283-5283, http://www.edac.org.

EDAC is an international association of companies engaged in the development, manufacture and sale of design tools to the electronic engineering community. These EDA (Electronic Design Automation) companies provide fundamental development technology to the worldwide electronics market. Formed in 1989, EDAC's mission is to promote the health of the EDA industry by fostering communication and cooperation between EDA companies, customers, and stakeholders, resulting in efficient and effective industry-wide solutions to industry-wide challenges.
Notes to Editors: Photos and the EDAC logo are available on request.
Carver A. Mead (1934- ) Background Information:
Since 1980, Carver Mead has been the Gordon and Betty Moore Professor of Engineering and Applied Science. Dr. Mead has taught at the California Institute of Technology for over thirty years. His focus is in the areas of VLSI design, ultra-concurrent systems and the physics of computation. He is a pioneer in the fields of solid-state electronics and the design of VLSI circuits, and he is the leading force behind the development of a design methodology for VLSI.

His recent work emphasizes the construction of silicon models of neural systems. He has written and contributed to over 100 publications in the areas of electronic design automation, solid-state physics, microelectronics and biophysics. He holds patents in these fields.

With Lynn Conway, he wrote the standard text for VLSI design, "Introduction to VLSI Design." In 1989, Addison Wesley published his book, "Analog VLSI and Neural Systems."

Dr. Mead has been involved with several EDA companies, including Silerity, Aptix, Actel and Synaptics. He was a founder of Silicon Compilers, Silerity and Synaptics among others.

Prof. Mead is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences. In 1996, Prof. Mead received the IEEE John Von Neumann Medal. This was given "for leadership and innovative contributions to VLSI and creative microelectronic structures."

Phil Kaufman Background Information:
Phil Kaufman died July 17, 1992, on a business trip in Japan. He spent more than a quarter-of-a-century in the computer industry and was an active EDAC member. His experience encompassed hardware, software, semiconductors, EDA and computer architecture. He was CEO of Quickturn Systems, now known as Quickturn Design Systems, and accelerated the use of emulation, a new design automation technology for fast IC development. In addition Mr. Kaufman was chairman and president of Silicon Compiler Systems where he was instrumental in advancing the concept of silicon compilation.

Prior to joining the EDA industry Mr. Kaufman was a manager in Intel's microprocessor component group. He was the driving force behind the IEEE Ethernet Standard, and was instrumental in developing the IEEE Floating Point Standard. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Michigan, held several patents and began his career in EDA at Computer Automation, Inc.