DATE 2021 became a virtual conference due to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic (click here for more details)

Taking into consideration the continued erratic development of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying restrictions of worldwide travelling as well as the safety and health of the DATE community, the Organizing Committees decided to host DATE 2021 as a virtual conference in early February 2021. Unfortunately, the current situation does not allow a face-to-face conference in Grenoble, France.

The Organizing Committees are working intensively to create a virtual conference that gives as much of a real conference atmosphere as possible.

IP3_3 Interactive Presentations

Date: Tuesday, 02 February 2021
Time: 18:30 - 19:00

Interactive Presentations run simultaneously during a 30-minute slot. Additionally, each IP paper is briefly introduced in a one-minute presentation in a corresponding regular session

Label	Presentation Title Authors
IP3_3.1	DOUBLE DQN FOR CHIP-LEVEL SYNTHESIS OF PAPER-BASED DIGITAL MICROFLUIDIC BIOCHIPS Speaker: Fang-Chi Wu, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Sun Yat-Sen University, TW Authors: Fang-Chi Wu¹, Jian-De Li², Katherine Shu-Min Li¹, Sying-Jyan Wang² and Tsung-Yi Ho³ ¹National Sun Yat-sen University, TW; ²National Chung Hsing University, TW; ³National Tsing Hua University, TW Abstract Paper-based digital microfluidic biochip (PB-DMFB) technology is one of the most promising solutions in biochemical applications due to the paper substrate. The paper substrate makes PB-DMFBs more portable, cost-effective, and less dependent on manufacturing equipment. However, the single-layer paper substrate, which entangles electrodes, conductive wires, and droplet routing in the same layer, raises challenges to chip-level synthesis of PB-DMFBs. Furthermore, current design automation tools have to address various design issues including manufacturing cost, reliability, and security. Therefore, a more flexible chip-level synthesis method is necessary. In this paper, we propose the first reinforcement learning based chip-level synthesis for PB-DMFBs. Double deep Q-learning networks are adapted for the agent to select and estimate actions, and then we obtain the optimized synthesis results. Experimental results show that the proposed method is not only effective and efficient for chip-level synthesis but also scalable to reliability and security–oriented schemes.
IP3_3.2	CONSTRUCTIVE USE OF PROCESS VARIATIONS: RECONFIGURABLE AND HIGH-RESOLUTION DELAY-LINE Speaker: Xiaolin Xu, Northeastern University, US Authors: Wenhao Wang¹, Yukui Luo² and Xiaolin Xu² ¹ECE Department of Northeastern University, US; ²Northeastern University, US Abstract Delay-line is a critical circuit component for highspeed electronic design and testing, such as high-performance FPGA and ASICs, to provide timing signals of specific duration or duty cycle. However, the performance of existing CMOS-based delay-lines is limited by various practical issues. For example, the minimum propagation delay (resolution) of CMOS gates is limited by the process variations from circuit fabrication. This paper presents a novel delay-line scheme, which instead of mitigating the process variations from circuit fabrication, constructively leverages them to generate time signals of specific duration. Moreover, the resolution of the proposed delay-line method is reconfigurable, for which we propose a Machine Learning modeling method to assist such reconfiguration, i.e., to generate time duration of different scales. The performance of the proposed delay-line is validated with HSpice simulation and prototype on a Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGA evaluation kit. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed delay

Label

Presentation Title
Authors

IP3_3.1

DOUBLE DQN FOR CHIP-LEVEL SYNTHESIS OF PAPER-BASED DIGITAL MICROFLUIDIC BIOCHIPS
Speaker:
Fang-Chi Wu, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Sun Yat-Sen University, TW
Authors:
Fang-Chi Wu¹, Jian-De Li², Katherine Shu-Min Li¹, Sying-Jyan Wang² and Tsung-Yi Ho³
¹National Sun Yat-sen University, TW; ²National Chung Hsing University, TW; ³National Tsing Hua University, TW
Abstract
Paper-based digital microfluidic biochip (PB-DMFB) technology is one of the most promising solutions in biochemical applications due to the paper substrate. The paper substrate makes PB-DMFBs more portable, cost-effective, and less dependent on manufacturing equipment. However, the single-layer paper substrate, which entangles electrodes, conductive wires, and droplet routing in the same layer, raises challenges to chip-level synthesis of PB-DMFBs. Furthermore, current design automation tools have to address various design issues including manufacturing cost, reliability, and security. Therefore, a more flexible chip-level synthesis method is necessary. In this paper, we propose the first reinforcement learning based chip-level synthesis for PB-DMFBs. Double deep Q-learning networks are adapted for the agent to select and estimate actions, and then we obtain the optimized synthesis results. Experimental results show that the proposed method is not only effective and efficient for chip-level synthesis but also scalable to reliability and security–oriented schemes.

IP3_3.2

CONSTRUCTIVE USE OF PROCESS VARIATIONS: RECONFIGURABLE AND HIGH-RESOLUTION DELAY-LINE
Speaker:
Xiaolin Xu, Northeastern University, US
Authors:
Wenhao Wang¹, Yukui Luo² and Xiaolin Xu²
¹ECE Department of Northeastern University, US; ²Northeastern University, US
Abstract
Delay-line is a critical circuit component for highspeed electronic design and testing, such as high-performance FPGA and ASICs, to provide timing signals of specific duration or duty cycle. However, the performance of existing CMOS-based delay-lines is limited by various practical issues. For example, the minimum propagation delay (resolution) of CMOS gates is limited by the process variations from circuit fabrication. This paper presents a novel delay-line scheme, which instead of mitigating the process variations from circuit fabrication, constructively leverages them to generate time signals of specific duration. Moreover, the resolution of the proposed delay-line method is reconfigurable, for which we propose a Machine Learning modeling method to assist such reconfiguration, i.e., to generate time duration of different scales. The performance of the proposed delay-line is validated with HSpice simulation and prototype on a Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGA evaluation kit. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed delay