Electronic design automation (also known as EDA or ECAD) is a category concerning the algorithms and tools for designing integrated circuits. With the continuous scaling of semiconductor technology, EDA has rapidly developed to handle ultra large scale integration (ULSI) while facing various challenges. As a subset of both electrical engineering and computer science, it covers a number of fields such as algorithm design, electronic analysis, computer architecture and integrated circuit design. With more than 30 years of development, EDA research at Tsinghua University covers the whole design flow from front-end high level synthesis to back-end physical design.

The Tsinghua EDA group has acquired an international reputation due to the outstanding research achievements on packing optimization algorithms, interconnect-centric design methodology and System on Chip (SoC) design methodology. In recent years, we have been funded with many high level national projects including 4 Major 863 projects, 3 National 973 fundamental research projects, 2 Major international co-operation program by National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and tens of NSFC projects and international cooperation projects. In particular, we are leading a national 11-5 key project entitled “Advanced EDA platform development” which is about 15 million RMB. Two major international co-operation programs entitled “Giga-Scale System-On-A-Chip International Research Center (2001-2005)” and “International Center for Design on Nanotechnologies (2006-2009)” received Grade A final evaluations by NSFC in 2005 and belong in the top 10 US/China collaboration projects selected by NSFC to highlight 2005. We have published a large number of high-quality papers in high-level international journals and top international conferences (such as more than 20 papers published in IEEE Transactions and about 25 papers published in top conferences such as DAC, ICCAD, ISPD), among which one paper published in DAC’2009 was nominated for best paper, a first for authors from mainland China. In the past 5 years, we have obtained Second Prize for the Award for Science and Technology Progress, granted by the Beijing city government (2007), and Second Class for the Science and Technology Progress Award, granted by the Ministry of Education (2006). We have also previously been awarded the National Awards for Science and Technology Progress, third class (1985), second class (1989), and first class (1993). We have collaborations with international top research groups and have published many co-authored papers, such as with groups from Stanford University, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSB, UCSD, Purdue University, UCR in American, Hiroshima University, Waseda University in Japan, KAIST in Korea and Hong Kong Chinese University in Hong Kong. International co-operation with international leading companies such as Intel US, Synopsys US, Cadence US, and JEDAT Japan make our research achievements applicable to practical applications.