Proceedings of the 11th international workshop on System level interconnect prediction

On behalf of the organizing committee, we would like to welcome you to the 11th International Workshop on System-Level Interconnect Prediction (SLIP '09), held on July 26, 2009. This year SLIP is co-located with Design Automation Conference (DAC) at the Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA, USA. The SLIP workshop focuses on modeling and predicting the characteristics of interconnect systems together with their impact on system performance. The SLIP '09 program puts strong emphasis on interconnect characteristics of emerging circuit technologies and on the applicability of interconnect estimation techniques to new intercommunication frontiers. After a rigorous review process, the program committee has selected twelve papers out of twenty-one contributed papers (acceptance rate 57%) and an additional invited paper for publication in the proceedings and oral presentations at the SLIP '09 workshop. The topics of selected papers cover (i) interconnect characterization techniques in emerging technologies (e.g., photonics, carbon nanotubes, and 3D ICs), (ii) the use of interconnect estimation methods in other intercommunication systems (multiprocessor systems and systems biology circuits), and (iii) the use of classical interconnect estimation techniques for ICs and FPGAs. In addition to the contributed papers, SLIP '09 features a keynote address by Dr. W. R. "Bill" Bottoms, the chairman of 3MTS, on "Interconnect Solutions for TeraScale Computing". SLIP '09 also features a special panel with presentations on "The Impact of Emerging Interconnect Technologies on SLIP Research Directions". The objective of the special panel is to formulate the potential research directions in interconnect technologies for the next 10 years. The panelists and the topics of their presentations are as follows. Professor K. Banerjee from University of California, Santa Barbara, will discuss the prospects of carbon nanomaterials for interconnects and passives. Professor J. Cong from University of California, Los Angeles, will discuss the prospects of RF interconnects for networks-on-chip. Professor S. Nayak from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will discuss the prospects of graphene nanoribbon for interconnects, and Professor K. Saraswat from Stanford University will discuss the prospects of Cu/low-k, CNT and optical interconnects. The panel will be moderated by Professor A. B. Kahng from University of California, San Diego, who headed many of the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) activities. We are certain that the presentations and discussions of this panel will be quite fruitful. This year we are also introducing a new feature into the SLIP program, where a 15 -- 20 minute discussion panel will follow each session. Each discussion panel is composed of experts who will provide further remarks and insights into the presented papers. The panel will also engage the attendees in discussions that evaluate the papers from the big perspective of the session scope. The discussion panels will also contemplate the open research problems and challenges that fit within the session topic. We hope that the discussion panels will improve the workshop feeling of SLIP '09, and that they will be memorable.