Guest Editorial [intro. to the special issue on the 2006 IEEE/ACM Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference]

The eight articles in this special issue are extended versions of selected papers from the 9th IEEE/ACM Design, Automation and Test in Europe (DATE) Conference, which was held on March 6-10, 2006 in Munich, Germany. The papers address some of the following topics: multiprocessor systems-on-chip (MPSoC) architectural and methodological issues; the problem of accelerating embedded processor execution through instruction set extensions; techniques for optimal bit width allocation in the conversion from floating point to fixed point in arithmetic circuits for low power; an algorithm to optimize circuits with tight sequential cycles; efficient methods to solve more general quantified Boolean formulas (QBFs); and soft error rate (SER) analysis for combinatorial circuits and the design of reconfigurable continuous-time delta-sigma modulator topologies. The selected papers are briefly summarized.