The DATE 2020 Conference and Exhibition was initially planned to take place in Grenoble, France from 9 to 13 March 2020. Due to the growing impact of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, the Organising Committees decided to transform the physical event in Grenoble to a virtual event online – an effectful decision which received great support from speakers who contributed presentations of high-quality on short notice to make sure that if participants cannot come to DATE, DATE comes to participants.

DATE combines the world’s favourite electronic systems design and test conference with an international exhibition for electronic design, automation and test, from system-level hardware and software implementation right down to integrated circuit design. This year, the conference was held as a virtual event from April to June 2020.

The virtual event mostly followed the initially planned programme of the physical event. Solely the seven in-depth technical tutorials could not be realised via the online platform.

The virtual Opening Ceremony of DATE 2020 included the first plenary keynote lecture by Luca Benini, ETH Zurich (Switzerland), who provided his presentation on the topic of “Open Parallel Ultra-Low Power Platforms for Extreme Edge AI”.

Catherine Schuman, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (US) focussed her Tuesday Lunchtime Keynote on Neuromorphic Computing and allowed participants to inspect challenges in that area also in relation to challenges in systems design.

The main conference programme from Tuesday to Thursday included 58 technical sessions organized in parallel tracks from the four areas

D – Design Methods & Tools

A – Application Design

T – Test and Dependability

E – Embedded and Cyber-physical Systems

and from several special sessions on Hot Topics, such as Emerging Design Technologies, Design and Test of Secure Systems, IoT Security, Embedded Systems for Deep Learning, Augmented Living and Personalized Healthcare, Robotics and Industry 4.0, as well as results and lessons learned from European projects. Additionally, there were numerous Interactive Presentations which have been organised and virtually presented in five IP sessions.

Two Special Days in the programme focused on areas bringing new challenges to the system design community: Embedded Artificial Intelligence and Silicon Photonics. Each of the Special Days has had a diverse programme of panels, tutorials and technical presentations and a lunchtime keynote.

Sessions and presentations for both Special Days were accessible for participants on the online conference platform, “Embedded Artificial Intelligence” being highlighted by MathWorks Fellow Jim Tung’s (US) keynote on leveraging embedded intelligence in industry.

The traditionally conference complementing exhibition for electronic design, automation and test was also included in the online conference. Profiles and presentations of both companies and collaborative research initiatives as well as EU projects were provided for interested participants.

Furthermore, participants could access various presentations on commercial and design-related topics, that were virtually provided in the Exhibition Theatre, where demonstrations by exhibiting companies, best-practice reports by industry leaders on their latest design projects and selected conference special sessions are combined. Again, a part of the Exhibition Theatre, was the recently included Publisher’s Session, which followed the Exhibition Theatre Keynote by Philippe Quinio, STMicroelectronics (France) thematising myth and reality of Design-in-the-cloud.

Six workshops completed the virtual programme of DATE 2020, covering several hot topics from areas like (a) Optical/Photonic Interconnects for Computing systems, (b) Computation-in-Memory, (c) Autonomous Systems Design, (d) Open-Source Design Automation, (e) Stochastic Computing for Neuromorphic Architectures as well as (f) Trustworthy Manufacturing and Utillization of Secured Devices.

The DATE Organising Committees would like to thank all speakers, sponsors and exhibitors as well as delegates for their flexibility, support and understanding during the transition process of DATE 2020.

Grenoble has been chosen to be the host of DATE 2021 from 1 to 5 February to then again bring together industry and research partnership face-to-face.

We are already looking forward to welcoming you at the next DATE conference! Stay healthy and all the best!

DATE 2020 Press Contacts