Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) is the enabling technology for an ongoing revolution in computers, communications, and electronics. Traditional VLSI Design course focuses primarily on digital integrated circuit design. The day of the purely digital chip is passing - most new chip designs include both analog and digital components. For example, it is now common for digital chips to integrate digital/analog (D/A) and analog-digital (A/D) converters to interface with the analog "outside world". Moreover, large "mixed signal" communications and consumer electronics "system on a chip" designs combine large blocks of both digital and analog circuits. Finally, shrinking transistor geometries require that digital chip designers consider circuit level issues which were formerly only of concern in analog chips. This workshop makes an effort to meet this challenge by augmenting a digital VLSI course with analog and mixed-signal concerns.

Low power has emerged as a principal theme in today's electronics industry. The need for low power has caused a major paradigm shift where power dissipation has become as important a consideration as performance and area. This workshop aims to review various strategies and methodologies for designing low power circuits and systems. Issues facing designers at architectural, logic, circuit and device levels and techniques proposed to overcome these difficulties will be highlighted. People involved in research in the area of VLSI design will directly benefit from this workshop as more focus is on research-oriented topics in the field and the speakers are renowned for their contributions in the field of VLSI Design.