DAC is the premier conference for the design and automation of electronic circuits and systems. Research papers, technical presentations and sessions are selected by a committee of electronic design experts that offer the latest information on recent developments, trends, management practices, new products, technologies and methodologies. Submit to DAC 2026 and be part of tomorrow’s innovation.

Topics of Interest

AI

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) program highlights the advances in the field with a focus on leading AI designs and AI usage in design automation. While artificial intelligence and neural network research has been ongoing for more than half a century, recent advances in computing and acceleration of the pace and scale of machine learning (ML) are revolutionizing the impact of artificial intelligence on every aspect of our daily lives, ranging from smart consumer electronics and services to self-navigating cars and personalized medicine. While AI was already changing computing from devices through near and far edges all the way to datacenters, more recently, the advances in Generative AI are further transforming our day to day lives and the way electronics is developed from chips to systems.

The AI sessions at DAC focuses on the fundamentals, accomplishments to date, and challenges ahead in development of ML/AI hardware, software and systems as well as application of AI/ML in design automation, providing a forum for researchers and practitioners across all the widely varying disciplines involved to connect, engage, and join in shaping the future of this exciting field.

Design

DAC has served as a meeting place for designers of electronics from chips to systems for over five decades. Increasingly, the challenges faced by the industry require co-optimization of design, methodologies and tools that can only be achieved using cross-domain interaction of researchers and practitioners. DAC serves this need by covering design as a topic area in the research and engineering tracks.

The design topics covered in the research track include the design of cyber-physical, System-on-Chip (SoC) and multi-die architectures, accelerator-based computing, emerging models of computation such as brain-inspired and quantum computing, digital and analog circuits, and emerging device technologies.

Separately the Engineering Track allows tool users to share challenges and benefits of different tools, flows, and methodologies for IP, front-end, back-end as well as systems and software design, and provides excellent opportunities for education and networking between end users and tool developers. There is no other way to improve your “design IQ” in such a short amount of time than to attend the Engineering Track

EDA

Electronic Design Automation (EDA) is even more important now with the continuous scaling of semiconductor devices, blending development requirements from chips to systems and extending beyond electronics into interactions with mechanical, electromagnetic effects of system design. Demands for lower power, higher reliability, and more agile electronic systems raise new challenges to design automation enabling such systems. For the past five decades, the primary focus of the research track at DAC has been to showcase leading-edge research and practice in tools and methodologies for the design of circuits and systems.

In addition to the traditional EDA topics ranging from physical design to system architectures, DAC features high-quality papers on design research, design practices, and design automation for cross-cutting topics including low-power, reliability, multicore/application-specific/heterogeneous architectures, 3-D integrations, multi-die systems, emerging device technologies, design automation of "things", and their applications. DAC's EDA technical program has ensured the best-in-class solutions that promise to advance EDA.

Security

Security sessions at DAC address an urgent need to create, analyze, evaluate, and improve the hardware, embedded systems and software base of the contemporary security solutions. Secure and trustworthy software and hardware components, platforms and supply chains are vital to all domains including financial, healthcare, transportation, and energy. Security of systems is becoming equally important. A revolution is underway in many industries that are "connecting the unconnected". 

Cyber physical systems, e.g., automobiles, smart grid, medical devices, etc., are taking advantage of integration of physical systems with the information systems. Not withstanding the numerous benefits, these systems are appealing targets of attacks. Attacks on the cyber-part of such systems can have disastrous consequences in the physical world. The scope and variety of attacks on these systems present design challenges that span embedded hardware, software, networking, and system design.

Security topics will be featured through invited special sessions, panels, and lecture/poster presentations by both practitioners and researchers to share their knowledge and experience on this evolving environment.

Systems

Systems Design is the art of choosing and designing the proper combination of hardware and software components to achieve system-level design goals like speed, efficiency, reliability, security, and safety. Systems Design is an increasingly diverse, disruptive, and challenging field for designs ranging from data centers, mobile devices, medical devices, automotive, consumer, robotics, drones, industrial applications and beyond. Software at the embedded scale is built into devices that may not necessarily be recognized as computing devices (e.g., thermostats, toys, defibrillators, and anti-lock brakes), but nevertheless controls the functionality and perceived quality of these devices. Software at the system-level increasingly drives system design requirements as well as workloads that determine chip and system architectures and testing.

The Systems sessions at DAC provide a forum for discussing the challenges of embedded design and an opportunity for leaders in the industry and academia to come together to exchange ideas and roadmaps for the future for this rapidly expanding area.