On behalf of the Technical Program Committee of ASP-DAC 2001, we would like to welcome all of you to ASP-DAC 2001, the first conference on EDA and design technologies in the new century.

The Technical Program Committee of ASP-DAC 2001 is organized by 88 EDA and LSI design professionals with 9 subcommittees. Each subcommittee selected high quality papers on System Design Methodology, Synthesis and Verification in Logic Design, Optimization and Verification in Physical Design, Test Technology and Design for Testability, Analog Circuit Design, Design for Manufacturability, Embedded Systems and Software, Reconfigurable Systems, and Design Experiments, respectively. Prof. Dongik Lee also independently organized a committee for special sessions on "Asynchronous System Design" . 161 papers were submitted to the regular and special sessions from 20 countries/regions. 83 papers are accepted as regular papers and 14 papers for short presentation. In the accepted papers, 80 papers are from academia. Best paper awards are presented to the highest quality papers among all accepted papers. 2 papers are awarded by the Best Paper Selection Committee in the Technical Program Committee.

These technical papers are complemented by an exciting mix of a panel discussion and invited talks on hot topics as well as educational embedded tutorials. Prof. Hidetoshi Onodera moderates a panel discussion entitled "Beyond the Red Brick Wall: Challenges and Solutions in 50nm Physical Design". Four distinguish researchers are invited as invited speakers and their talks will address the directions of design methodologies for ultra deep submicron era (A6-a and B1-3), low power circuit design (C4-1) and system synthesis technology (C2-1). Eight tutorial talks by top scientists are also embedded in the technical sessions. The subjects of the embedded tutorials cover recent important progresses in design for manufacturability (B2-3), mixed signal simulation (B4-4), test technology (D4-1), low power design and compiler techniques for embedded systems (D3-1 and D5-1), and reconfigurable computation (C7-3). Another 2 tutorial talks on asynchronous system design are embedded in the special sessions (E3-1 and E4-1).

As co-chairs of Technical Program Committee, we want to thank all of members of the committee, people who reviewed papers, moderators of sessions, and all of authors and speakers who submitted papers and will give talks in the conference. We also appreciate the publication chair, Prof. Kiyoharu Hamaguchi and TPC secretaries, Dr. Hiroshi Date and Dr. Tohru Ishihara for their dedications to prepare the technical program and the proceedings. Thanks are also due to Mr. Makoto Sugihara and Mr. Sozo Inoue, who developed and maintained an electric submission and review system, which is firstly introduced to this conference. Their efforts made the conference more popular and more international.

We hope that you will find new directions of EDA and design technologies in the program and the proceedings of ASP-DAC 2001.

Co-Chairs, ASP-DAC 2001 Program Committee