Dear Colleague,

The 7th VLSI Design and Test Workshops (VDAT 2003) were held in
Bangalore during Aug 28-30, 2003. VDAT'03 was attended by about
300 VLSI professionals from India.

Highlights of the event included:

o Keynote talk by Dr Chandrashekhar, CEERI, Pilani, on 28th
o Keynote talk by Dr Raul Camposano, CTO of Synopsys, on 29th
o Keynote talk by Vasudevan A. of Wipro Tech, on 29th
o Keynote talk by Mahesh Mehendale, TI Fellow, on 30th
o Special session on problems relating to Student Projects in VLSI
o "Frequently Not Asked Questions" panel (Panelists: Rubin Parekhji,
TI India, NAvakant Bhat, IISc, Shabbir Batterywala, Synopsys, India,
and M. Balakrishnan, IIT Delhi, moderated by C.P. Ravikumar, TI India)
o Panel discussion on the topic of Sustaining Quality in VLSI
Education in India (Panelists: Balakrishnan M., IIT Delhi, H.
Ramakrishna, Brandwidth, Vishwani Agrawal, Rutgers U., and Ashok Rao,
IISc, moderator C.P. Ravikumar, TI India).
o Panel discussion on the topic of "Moore's Law -- at what cost?"
[Panelists: Mahesh Mehendale of TI India, Mahesh Rao of Aspirenet
Comm, Sandeep Relan of Broadcom, Dinesh Sharma of IIT Bombay,
moderated by C.P. Ravikumar, TI India.]
o Invited talks (M.K. Radhakrishnan, Navakanta Bhat, P.R. Panda,
J.N. Roy, Dinesh Sharma)
o Submitted paper presentations

Details of the program can be obtained from http://vlsi-india.net. The program
was made available in hardcopy proceedings (published by Elite Publishers, New
Delhi) as well as CD formats to participants.

About 175 fellowships were awarded to PG students and faculty of
academic institutions in India.

All attendees of VDAT were given the opportunity of obtaining free
membership to the VLSI Society of India for a period of two years
(2003-2005). About 200 participants took advantage of this
opportunity and signed up for membership.

Students who attended the panel discussion are welcome to enter a
contest of summarizing the salient points of the discussion in the
form of an essay. Send your entry to cpravikumar@...

VDAT 2004 will be held in Mysore during August 26-28, 2004. The Call
for Participation for VDAT 2004 will become available soon.

Regards,

C.P. Ravikumar
General Chair