Panel and embedded tutorial — Logic synthesis and place and route: After 20 years of engagement, wedding in view?

The first half of the 80's marked a fundamental milestone in the history of design implementation: an amazing number of key research papers were published, in a relatively short period of time; suddenly, logic synthesis, placement, and routing algorithms reached a maturity level which enabled the birth of the first wave of modern EDA companies and design implementation tools: Silvar-Lisco, Cadence, Synopsys, Tangent…