Where Electronics Begins^™

About Phil Kaufman After many years as a design engineer and manager at companies including Intel, Phil became chairman and president of Silicon Compiler Systems, an early provider of high level EDA tools which enabled designers develop complex chips more efficiently. With design complexity increasing, Phil became CEO of Quickturn Design Systems, a pioneer in the emulation of complex chips. Quickturn's products helped designers to speed the verification of complex designs. Phil died of a heart attack during a business trip in Japan in 1992. The EDA Consortium founded the Phil Kaufman Award to honor his memory and contributions to the electronic design industry. [More information.]

About the Phil Kaufman Award

Presented by the Electronic Design Automation Consortium and the IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation, this award honors an individual who has had demonstrable IMPACT on the field of electronic design through contributions in Electronic Design Automation (EDA).

• Business Impact
• Industry Direction and Promotion Impact
• Technology and Engineering Impact
• Educational and Mentoring Impact

The 2013 Phil Kaufman Award will be presented on Sunday, June 2^nd, 2013 at the 50^th Design Automation Conference.

Nomination Information

Phil Kaufman Award Recipients

Dr. Chenming Hu Contribution: Dr. Hu has made major contributions to transistor modeling enabling the generation of FinFET based design. His contributions include advances in device physics, modeling, and reliability, including the BSIM compact models, widely used to in the development of integrated circuits. He has also advanced semiconductor technology with nearly one thousand publications, and has been a mentor and role model to hundreds of graduate students. Award Year: 2013 Additional Information: Press Release Upcoming Award Presentation Ceremony

Dr. C. L. (David) Liu Contribution: Dr. Liu led the transformation from ad hoc EDA to algorithmic EDA. He was an early advocate for more rigorous design automation, arguing that powerful, formal algorithmic techniques were essential to the effective solution of complex design automation problems. His technical contributions are at the foundation of a multitude of current EDA tools within several disciplines, including behavioral synthesis, logic synthesis and physical design. Award Year: 2011 Additional Information: Press Release Award Dinner and Ceremony Award Presentation

P.O. (Pat) Pistilli Contribution: Early in his career, Pat developed tools to make hardware designers more productive. Recognizing the potential for transforming the electronics industry and the need to grow the profession, he co-founded DAC to promote and share technical advances in CAD across the electronics industry. Award Year: 2010 Additional Information: Press Release Award Dinner and Ceremony Video Tributes Award Presentation

Dr. Randal E. Bryant Contribution: Dr. Randy Bryant’s early work focused on switch level simulation. Subsequently, he developed algorithms based on ordered binary decision diagrams (OBDD), which form the computational basis for tools that perform hardware verification, logic circuit synthesis, and test generation. His work revolutionized the field, enabling reasoning about large-scale circuit designs for the first time. Award Year: 2009 Additional Information: Press Release Award Dinner and Ceremony Video Trailer Award Presentation

Aart de Geus Contribution: Aart de Geus has had a major impact on the EDA industry.. As a pioneer in both the technology and business of logic synthesis, he found the path to commercialize one of EDA’s most important capabilities and, by building upon it, created the industry’s largest EDA company. Moreover, he has given back much of his personal success both to EDA and to the community at large Award Year: 2008 Additional Information: Press Release Award Dinner and Ceremony Video Trailer Award Presentation

Robert Dutton Contribution: Dr. Dutton has made significant contributions to the EDA industry in the area of computer simulation of integrated circuit (IC) technology. Called the "father of TCAD", his pioneering work in both IC fabrication process modeling and electrical behavior modeling of devices and circuits have been broadly adopted by the industry and used widely in support of technology development. Award Year: 2006 Additional Information: Press Release Award Dinner and Ceremony Award Presentation

Phil Moorby Contribution: Phil Moorby created and helped to popularize the Verilog Hardware Description Language, which has become and today remains one of the world's most popular electronic design languages. Phil's Verilog HDL contributes to an electronic designer's productivity, especially when combined with the many hundreds of commercial EDA tools that support it and its derivatives. Award Year: 2005 Additional Information: More information Award Dinner and Ceremony Presentation Transcript Award Presentation

Joe Costello Contribution: Joe Costello was selected to receive the Phil Kaufman Award because of his business contributions that helped grow the EDA industry. Under his leadership, Cadence became the world's leading supplier of EDA software and services and one of the top ten largest software suppliers in the world. Through his leadership, Joe added new dimensions to EDA and reformulated our view of the entire industry. Award Year: 2004 Additional Information: More information Award Dinner and Ceremony Presentation Transcript Award Presentation

Richard Newton Contribution: Dr. Newton developed one of the first interactive versions of the SPICE circuit simulator. Continuing his work in circuit simulation, he pioneering mixed-mode simulation and then a timing analysis technique. Richard introduced the notion of a "CAD Framework", where a unified data model, open tool based integration methodology and extension language are used to construct and evolve an EDA system. Richard also played a key role in the formation of many successful EDA companies. Award Year: 2003 Additional Information: More information Award Dinner and Ceremony Presentation Transcript Award Presentation Video

Ron Rohrer Contribution: Ron Rohrer has always been at the leading edge of circuit simulation R&D. The SPICE simulation program, which resulted from a class project that he led, has had widespread, substantial impact on the entire electronics industry. As an educator, a researcher, an entrepreneur and a mentor to many accomplished leaders in EDA, Ron has caused truly transformative changes in our industry time and time again. Award Year: 2002 Additional Information: More information Presentation Transcript

Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli Contribution: Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli is a world-renowned authority on circuit simulation, computer-aided design of integrated circuits, logic synthesis, and system design. With over 500 technical publications to his name and fourteen books—spanning many areas of EDA including control theory, systems theory, and applied mathematics, Alberto has educated and mentored a generation of distinguished university faculty and industry leaders. Award Year: 2001 Additional Information: More information Presentation Transcript

Yen-Son (Paul) Huang Contribution: Yen-Son Huang was chosen to receive the Phil Kaufman award for his contributions to the overall advancement of the EDA industry as an entrepreneur and a technologist, including his pioneering work in the areas of design emulation, verification and debugging. Among other advancements, he invented the Dracula Physical Verification System, which was a breakthrough product that solved one of the key IC design bottlenecks of the time. Award Year: 2000 Additional Information: More information Presentation Transcript

Hugo De Man Contribution: Hugo De Man has contributed to many aspects of design technology and to the application of these techniques to circuit design and system design. He and his students have made many fundamental contributions in CAD, from some of the earliest mixed-level circuit simulation work to system-level synthesis and verification. Award Year: 1999 Additional Information: More information Presentation Transcript

Ernest S. Kuh Contribution: Dr. Kuh has made outstanding contributions to circuit layout theory and algorithms in partitioning, floorplanning, placement and routing. He has made valuable contributions to the physical domain, and groomed and mentored a large number of students that have significantly advanced EDA into the vital role that it plays in electronics industry today. He is co-author of four books and over 180 papers in circuits, electronics, networks, systems, and computer aided design. Award Year: 1998 Additional Information: More information Presentation Transcript

James E. Solomon Contribution: Jim Solomon's accomplishments are numerous. He laid many of the ground rules for making commercial EDA a reality. His company, SDA, introduced the first software only business model. The EDA and electronics industries would not be where they are today without Jim Solomon's vision, insight and leadership. Award Year: 1997 Additional Information: More information Presentation Transcript

Carver A. Mead Contribution: 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. His structured design approach to VLSI design defined a new methodology for chip development, which was the primary reason behind design productivity increasing so rapidly throughout the 1980s. Award Year: 1996 Additional Information: More information Presentation Transcript

Donald O. Pederson Contribution: Don Pederson's is best known for his work in circuit simulation, including the SPICE circuit simulator. Just as important as his contributions to SPICE and circuit simulation is the fact that he was the first significant industry catalyst for EDA for integrated circuits. His engineering contributions to the electronics industry were not only reduced to practice, but represent the most effective model we have seen for how such innovations can be transferred from universities to industry. Award Year: 1995 Additional Information: More information Presentation Transcript

Hermann K. Gummel Contribution: Hermann Gummel has made many fundamental contributions to central areas in EDA, including integral charge control model for bipolar junction transistors that bears his name, the Gummel-Poon model. He was also the first to build and publish a practical device extractor, the basis of ERC software. Hermann also developed on of the first graphical editors, GRED. He is a mentor and leader, having motivated generations of his colleagues throughout the world. Award Year: 1994 Additional Information: More information Presentation Transcript

Nominations

The nominee's contributions should fall into any or a combination of the following categories:

• Business Impact
• Industry Direction and Promotion Impact
• Technology and Engineering Impact
• Educational and Mentoring Impact

Important note:
Beginning in 2010, the Phil Kaufman Award committee has updated the standard nomination form with new sections of interest and limitations on the length and number of endorsements one can submit on behalf of the nominee.  The committee now also requires that archived nominations submitted prior to 2007 be resubmitted on the new form (below) for consideration.  Moving forward, all nominations older than 3 years will be rolled off unless resubmitted.

Instructions:

1. Download the Nomination Form (Word format).
2. Complete the form.
3. Return the form by email to kaufman.nominations@edac.org.

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