June 11, 1998 (11)

Students win top honors in VLSI Design Contest

ANN ARBOR---Students from the University of Michigan and Seattle University took top honors in the 1998 Student VLSI Design Contest.

Initiated in 1981 by Prof. Richard B. Brown of the U-M and Prof. Kent Smith of the University of Utah, the contest was founded to promote excellence in education for integrated circuit designers at universities. It provides competition between students designing and fabricating integrated circuits at the novice and experienced levels.

Seven schools across the country participated in the VLSI competition. A gathering of students, professors, judges, and spectators were present at the U-M Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Building for the awards ceremony. The winners took home a combined $14,000.

George Carignan, associate dean for graduate studies at the U-M College of Engineering, said: "I can't imagine a better opportunity for students to get this kind of practical experience with positive industry interaction."

U-M engineering students Matthew Postiff and Timothy Strong took first place in the experienced class with their project, "A 32-bit Multiply-Accumulate Circuit in Complementary GaAs (CGaAsTM)." First place in the novice class went to Seattle University's Chris DeForeest, Melissa Degen, and Alexandre Plombin, with the project "Content-Addressable Memory."
Prizes went to (see http://www.eecs.umich.edu/VLSI for complete list):

Experienced Class
1st Place: University of Michigan (M. Postiff, T. Strong).
2nd Place: Iowa State University (S. Karthikeyan, A. Tammineedi).
3rd Place: University of Michigan (N. Baisa, S. Monasa, O. Poon, M. VanderPloeg).
Hon. Men.: University of Virginia (W. Chen).

Novice Class
1st Place: Seattle University (C. DeForeest, M. Degen, A. Plombin).
2nd Place: University of Michigan (I. Lin, C. Lin, Y. Zhang, J. Cao).
3rd Place: Stanford University (H. Rodgriguez, J. Medlock).
3rd Place: University of Washington (D. Haube, J. Reiter).
Hon. Men.: University of Michigan (Y. He).
Hon. Men.: University of Michigan (A. Basu, J. Beaubien, J. Nicholls, A. Wagner).
Hon. Men.: Mississippi State University (S. Jackson).

This year's sponsors were: Advanced Micro Devices, Duet Technologies (formerly Cascade Design Automation), Evans & Sutherland, Ford Microelectronics, In-System Design, Intel, Lucent Technologies, Mentor Graphics, National Semiconductor, Qualcomm, RocketChips, Texas Instruments, and the University of Michigan. Judges from AMD, Ford, In-System Design, National Semiconductor, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments determined the winners.

Jim Quarfoot, contest judge and system engineer at Texas Instruments, remarked that "this contest provides students with an outstanding opportunity to show how they can solve practical engineering problems. It makes them begin to think like engineers solving a system problem, rather than just a student doing homework. This is not just a VLSI design contest, it is engineering practicum."

Deanna Hennessy, manager of university recruiting at Qualcomm, stated that "Qualcomm actively encourages student excellence in all areas of VLSI design and is proud to be a sponsor again this year for the Nationwide Student VLSI Design Contest." Ray Johnson, president and CEO of RocketChips, Inc., added: "our support of the University of Michigan's VLSI Design Contest provides us excellent insight into new concepts and unique designs emerging from the university environment."

Contact: Adam Marcus, (734) 647-7089
or Catharine June, (734) 936-2965