SIGDA newsletter, vol 17, number F r o m informal discussions I also learned about some less-reported practical considerations. For example, gate-array designs have not been the focus of m u c h attention at recent conferences. I found that they are very m u c h alive; one speaker estimated that 9 8 % of their customers used gate arrays, because they are inexpensive and allow fast turnaround. I found that while there is sometimes freedom in placing I-O pads, their positions are commonly fixed because of the convenience of uniformity in packaging. Several participants m a d e it clear that today's circuits incur great demands on m e m o r y during routing - programs sometimes grind to a halt due to excessive paging on large problems. The sessions on benchmark examples to evaluate competing layout systems were free-wheeling and lively. All agreed that such contests are important, and that more examples would help. Simple "place-only" examples will encourage students to compete. As always, there is some uncertainty about h o w to evaluate placements. Total-wire-length estimators such as the s u m of net half-perimeters are less than ideal. Sending all the placements to a c o m m o n routing package and evaluating the final area and track count is more realistic,but can introduce bias against placement heuristics that are tuned for particular routers. Thus it will also be useful to have tests to evaluate integrated place-and-route packages for their overall effectiveness. REPORT ON A W O C - 8 6 Jean R. S. Blair Department of Computer Science University of Tennessee Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-1301 The 1986 Aegean Workshop on Computing: VLSI Algorithms and Architectures (AWOC 86) was held in Loutraki, Greece, July 8-11, 1986. It was organized b y l h c Compuler Technology Institute in Patras in cooperation with ACM, EATCS, II2F.I'~, and the General Secretariat of Research and Technology (Ministry of Industry, Energy& Tecilnology of Greece). A W O C 8 6 w a s the second meclingin thc international Workshop on Parallel Computing and VI,SI Theory. The firsl meeting was in Amalfi, Italy in 1984. Of the 70 abstracts submitted to the program commiltee, 23 were acccplcd and presenled. The general topics of the articles included: algorithms for (and models of) parallel compulation, nelwork communications, VLSI layouts, VI,SI architectures, and syslolic arrays. In addition to the regular papers, lhe workshop provided several invited talks as well as special sessions with invited speakers froln applied VLSI and industry. A m o n g l h e invited speakers were: F. P. Preparata (University of Illinois-Urbana), P. M. B. Vitanyi (M.I.T. and Centrum voor Wiskunde en Illformatica Amsterdam), F. T. Leighton (M.I.T.), T. Lengauer (Universily of Padcrborn), M. Yannakakis (Bell [,abs), and A. Sangiovalmi-Vincenlelli (Universily of California-Berkeley). The informal atmosphere of the workshop promoted inany fruitful academic discussions. The participants left professionally satisfied and eager to repeat the evenl in two years. AWOC 88, the third rneeting of tile International Workshop on Parallel Cornpuling and VLSI Theory is to take place between June 28 and July 1, 1988 on Corfu Island, Greece. Corfu is located on the western edge of Greece, between Ilaly and Greece. Those interested in receiving information about AWOC-88 should contact Prof. Paul Spirakis, Computer Technology Institute, P.O. Box 1122, 26110 Palras, Greece.

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