“Scaling” the Impact of EDA Education

1. “Scaling” the Impact of EDA Education Preliminary Findings from the CCC Workshop Series on Extreme Scale Design Automation I. Bahar, A. Jones, S. Katkoori, P. Madden, D. Marculescu, and I. Markov <esda website> akjones@pitt.edu

2. Introduction • We have reached the end of Dennard Scaling. • Road mapping efforts continue to focus primarily on Silicon • Significant effort is now placed in “emerging” technologies • Replacement Fabrication Technologies • Niche Technologies to Augment Silicon • Are some a “wild-goose chase?” • Can an emerging technology really take off? • Should the comparison point be the best we can do with silicon? • What is the state of the workforce and education pipeline?

3. Three EDA Important “Variables” • Technology • Heavily invested in Si • What happens if we must rely on a new or hybrid technology? • Market • Desktops are dinosaurs • Tablets/smartphones • Bio/implantable, sensor networks, etc. • Education • Is what we’re teaching relevant? • EDA is “too hard” • Where are our graduates actually going?

4. Technical Problems in EDA • Can EDA truly harness the capabilities in conventional technologies of this generation? • Or even last generation, or several generations ago? • Increasing scale of devices in a chip continues to raise the bar • Verification remains a consistently challenging and unsolved problem • Already problematic, power and thermal effects are being further exacerbated • Resiliency is a new problem • We are already under achieving!

5. Tomorrow’s Design Automation Must • Efficiently harness systems integrating 1015 devices • Effectively model emerging technologies • Provide trustworthy validation of industry strength systems • Address current and emerging design metrics • Extend design tools beyond ICs to entire systems • Model interaction with users and the environment

6. The Risks of Not Acting are Great • If Dennard Scaling for silicon is truly over… • A new technology would require a major refresh to replace silicon-based semiconductors • What if there is nothing else? • In 10 years we could be faced with reinventing EDA tool chains for an entirely different technology with radically different impacts for: • Power • Cost • Performance • Environmental Impacts • Will we have the workforce available to accomplish this?

7. Who will lead the revolution? GSA Global, 2011

8. CCC Workshops on Extreme Scale Design Automation • Series of three workshops • Workshop 1: Emerging Technologies and Workforce Continuity • March 7-8, 2013 Pittsburgh • Workshop 2: Extreme Scale Chips and Industry Research • June 2-3, 2013 Austin (Collocated with DAC) • Workshop 3: Achieving Sustainable Collaborations Through Abstractions, Collaborations, and Benchmarks • November TBA, 2013 San Jose (Collocated with ICCAD)

9. Overarching Questions • What are the most critical directions for EDA research in support of extreme scale designs? • What are potential new application domains for EDA? Should EDA refocus on full systems? • To what extent should the EDA research agenda and funding be driven by industry? • What are the best practices for collaboration between industry and academia? • What are the educational priorities for EDA?

10. Outline • Introduction/Motivation • Background • Workshop Findings • Curriculum • Strategies • Building a Pipeline • Conclusions • Early feedback from Workshop 2

11. Trends EDA Market • US semi. market share 20% • 30% in 1984 • Asia (excluding Japan) 50% • 5% in 1984 • EDA Sector worth $6.4 Bil • IP is about $1.6 Bil • EDA growing 1.5% annually • IP growing 12% annually

12. Workforce Trends • Consistent with Market Trends • Domestic EDA workforce aging at a rate between 0.8-0.9 years annually. • EDA vendors do not hire dramatically domestically • Rather EDA continues to rely on outsourcing • Outsourced jobs are reported as fairly ineffective. • Disconnect between workforce and education pipeline • Students are less attracted to EDA • Attracted to positions of high social appear (e.g., Google, Facebook) • EDA companies require more sophisticated technical background and pay less!

13. Outline • Introduction/Motivation • Background • Workshop Findings • Curriculum • Strategies • Building a Pipeline • Conclusions • Early feedback from Workshop 2

14. Barriers EDA? But I want to save the planet! EDA? But I want to do something cool! • Students want to impact society • EDA is not perceived to “change the world” • EDA is TWO levels of indirection away from “cool” “What do you mean, build the tools to make the chips that enable the smartphone?” EDA? That’s too hard! I have to learn physics and algorithms and stuff!

15. Disconnect between Workforce and Education

17. EDA for Conventional CMOS • What are the most important challenges for conventional CMOS? • How does this change in at the “extreme” scale • When will Dennard Scaling fail to continue in CMOS? • Will it fail? • What level of investment is necessary to face these challenges? • Who should make this investment? • What happens if fabrication advances halt altogether?

18. Expanding Into New Markets • What are potential new application domains for EDA? • EDA for Portable and Wireless Electronics? • Wearable systems, sensors, software defined radio • EDA for Biomedical Systems and Studies • Implantable devices, bio-chips, continuous monitoring, brain-computer interfaces, reverse engineering bio-systems • EDA for Energy Generation and Distribution • Hybrid power sources, smart grid • Others?

19. Role of Education in EDA • Sagging interest by students in EDA • Problems are considered too difficult • Research problems in academia are considered toys by industry • Other careers are more flashy (e.g., Google/Facebook/Bio) • Industry feedback is a shortage of qualified professionals • Particularly true among fresh graduates • Feeling the academia cannot teach what they actually need to know on the job. • Solutions?

20. Impressions on state of workforce • Anyone with talent is drawn to other areas • EDA topics are not well presented in the media, not exciting • EDA is saturated/matured, exponential growth is over • EDA is dying, fault of EDA companies, claim to have all the solutions, cut off resources, don’t invest in academic research and close off the pipeline • EDA needs experts beyond tool-flows, cross disciplinary • The problems in EDA are too hard to be attractive over flashy products

21. Obstacles to EDA market share and attracting top candidates • EDA insinuating into too many new areas without being called EDA • More research to generate excitement not profit • Short sighted investments from industry/government groups • Few open solvable problems and non-competitive salaries • A better business model to fund advanced development • The perception that EDA is a solved field

22. EDA too broad/demanding for effective education? • Too Broad? • EDA has always been broad, we cannot work in silos • Not too broad, should engage machine learning • Not too broad for education, too broad for training • Breadth is not new, not the problem, problem is the indirection (must see IC design before EDA challenges) • Yes, requires a lot of background, but also true in many technical areas • Too Demanding? • No look at physics • Yes, toy problems are not sufficient for real EDA education anymore • Yes, given there is no real research funding for EDA

23. What skills are missing? • High-quality software engineering skills • Good programmers • Familiarity with state of the art technology (proprietary/ITAR) • Understanding practical challenges and constraints • Ability to design algorithms that are effective for industry grade problem sizes

24. Perceived maturity unattractive for startups, no out-of-box thinking? • 50% of responses basically answered “yes” • Limited size of EDA industry (i.e., market share) • Problems too difficult to find niche • Business model less attractive, no end game, deters out-of-box thinking • Can still be an attractive market for a point tool

25. Expand into non-traditional markets? Do they require design automation? • We should, but we are not the only field with this talent • Yes, into software engineering, we have been verification than SW verification • Define EDA without the E, to show its open to new applications • Areas mentioned: • Finance, biochemical systems, bio-engineering, synthetic bio, data-mining, embedded systems, quantum computation

26. Value of Emerging Technologies • Will a new technology eventually supplant silicon? • What technologies are worth investing in? • Is a hybrid solution more likely? • What technologies are fundamentally flawed? • What are the realistic upsides of emerging technologies? • Who should make the investment to advance these technologies to “commercial ready” state?

27. Challenges in EDA

28. Challenges in EDA • Interplay between resiliency and power is important • Intertwined, cannot treat distinctly • Transistors become unreliable, should be addressed in EDA Flow • If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter how energy efficient (validation, resilience?) • Margin and variation identified as key issues. • Cost versus performance tradeoff becoming important

29. Technology Trends

30. Technology Trends Other: “Stuff still in labs” Other: Superconducting Electronics

32. Brayton-Cong 2009 NSF Workshop • July 2009 NSF workshop on EDA findings published in two part IEEE D&T series • US is falling behind Taiwan and Europe in EDA funding. • Taiwan is investing in DA at 1.5-2X higher rate than the US compared with a GDP of 2.7% of the US. • Fundamental EDA concepts often require investment over time to become transformative • Verification and model checking, Non-linear model order reduction • Synthesis for emerging objectives: noise, thermal, variability, reliability, etc. • Programming Languages • Mixed-signal

33. Brayton-Cong 2009 NSF Workshop • Key New EDA Challenges • Scalable Design Methodologies • Predictable design flows • Intuitive, simplified, and standardized design environments/interfaces • Appropriate abstractions • Scalable synthesis and verification • Post-CMOS/emerging technologies • Uncertainty/Robustness • New classes of algorithms and security

34. Brayton-Cong 2009 NSF Workshop • Emerging areas for EDA (new markets) • Biology: System bio, synthetic bio • Cyber-physical systems • Datacenter design • Software systems, etc. • Theory and EDA • Cache-aware and CMP-parallel algorithms • Robustness in design • Statistical design • Theoretical analysis of EDA algorithms/benchmarks

35. Brayton-Cong 2009 NSF Workshop Education • Challenges: • EDA internships are limited • Reduced VC funds • Faculty positions are tight • Student interest has decreased • Industrial EDA research is declining • Commercialization of academic research is more difficult • Positive factors: • EDA will not disappear • Cooperation between industry and academia is high • Technology trends make EDA problems harder • EDA engineers are well paid compared to other engineers • EDA principals valuable in other fields • EDA continues within “hot areas” • System-level, DFM, robustness, many-core, etc.

36. Brayton-Cong 2009 NSF Workshop Recommendations to NSF: Increase funding by 2.5X • Research • Large-scale efforts that couple design with EDA • Joint research with academia, industry, and system vendors • DA for emerging areas • Interdisciplinary DA + theory and/or mathematics • Education • Developing of senior-level EDA courses • Shared courseware infrastructure for EDA • Increased Post-Doc programs for EDA • Academic/Industry Collaboration • Faculty/summer students at EDA and/or IP design houses • Programs to help faculty spin-off startups and get married to existing startups

37. Workshop Agenda • Two halves • First: Technologies and New Markets • Second: Education and Workforce • 11:00-12:30, Short talks on Technologies and Markets • Should EDA expand into new markets and if so what markets are appropriate? • Can we make these new markets part of the "core of EDA," and not simply have our community "leave" for greener pastures? • Followed by break-out discussions (over lunch) to discuss and write-up findings

38. Workshop Agenda 2 • 4:30-5:30, Short talks on Education and Workforce • Is there a shortage of EDA professionals and if so, what should be done? • Is the US competitive in this area in light of outsourcing and recent investments in Europe and Asia? • Is EDA too difficult to effectively educate new professionals? • How can EDA compete with more glamorous careers (e.g., social media, other markets)? • Followed by break-out discussions Friday morning to discuss and write-up findings

39. A Day in the Life of a 7nm Chip Architect Keynote Address Bob Colwell Deputy Director, MTO DARPA