NASA Office of Logic Design

A scientific study of the problems of digital engineering for space flight systems,
with a view to their practical solution.

2003 MAPLD International Conference

Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center
Washington, D.C.

September 9-11, 2003

Evaluation of the 2003 MAPLD International Conference

Below please find the results of the evaluation forms that have been sent in.  I shall update this page as more evaluations are returned via mail, fax, and the on-line evaluation form.  Every item on each evaluation form is read, discussed, and evaluated for implementation.  Indeed, a number of the suggestions are already in the process of being implemented.  I have added some comments below in red.

Thank you for your comments and participation in the MAPLD International Conference.  Please feel free to contact me by e-mail at any time with additional suggestions or criticisms.

Best regards,
Richard B. Katz
Chairman, MAPLD International Conference
NASA Office of Logic Design

Identify Yourself

Academia:	11	14%
Consultant:	6	8%
Industry:	32	41%
Government:	23	29%
Not specified:	6	8%
Total	78

How Did You Hear

klabs.org	16	19%
Other www site	5	6%
MAPLD 2002:	24	29%
e-mail:	15	18%
co-worker/manager:	5	6%
DoD Sponsor	1	1%
Direct Mail	2	2%
Aerospace America	1	1%
Aerospace Daily	0	0%
Military & Aerospace Electronics	1	1%
Other Method:	12	14%
Other Conference	2	2%
Total	84

The Conference Met My Expectations

1:		1	1%
2:		2	3%
3:		10	13%
4:		38	49%
5:		27	35%
Total		78

The Food and Beverages Were:

1:		0	0%
2:		4	5%
3:		5	6%
4:		27	35%
5:		42	54%
Total		78

The Registration Process Was:

1:		3	4%
2:		4	5%
3:		8	10%
4:		25	32%
5:		39	49%
Total		79

The Facility Was:

1:		0	0%
2:		3	4%
3:		4	5%
4:		28	36%
5:		43	55%
Total		78

The Location Was:

1:		0	0%
2:		4	5%
3:		8	10%
4:		24	30%
5:		43	54%
Total		79

Attending Next Year?

Yes:		68	92%
No:		6	8%

Comments 2003:

• Food was fantastic!  Many Chinese burps to the chef!
• Excellent overall!  Very informative!
• Much better location in D.C. than at JHU.  I hope the conference continue to be in Downtown D.C.
• Good organizations, sessions, food and drink.
• My only complaint was lunch on Tuesday taking too long and missing the FPGA radiation talk at lunch.  But that was fixed by Wednesday.  [Note that the original conference plan called for an attendance of approximately 225; around 400 people came.  The Reagan Building personnel did a fantastic job of adjusting the setup for Wednesday.  The planning function has been brought in-house and will be shared by NASA and the GSA/Reagan Building planners with no third parties involved for 2004.  -- rk]
• Migration to the Pavilion was very restrictive for breaks and lunch.  Need access to stairs.  [This was our first year at the Reagan Building and our plan called for about 225 attendees.  With the outstanding attendance this year we are changing the plan to keep all events on the same level. We have already booked the Atrium Ballroom as a change from the Pavilion.  -- rk]
• Need a better setup for lunch.  The lines were quite long.
• Not an ideal atmosphere/opportunity to know who is attending and talk to them.  [Name tags and registration lists were distributed in the check-in packets.  Please e-mail me with suggestions on how to fix this.  -- rk]
• It was a great conference.
• The Reagan Center is pretty hard and noisy, and there wasn't anyplace to sit down to shoot the bull with your buds during breaks. The hard floor makes your feet tired after a while. The exhibits were too far away. That was the one advantage of APL: the K Center was small and quiet, overall more comfortable. Getting up to the Pavilion was a real hassle, and on Tuesday I hit the food court rather than deal with the Pavilion crowd.  [For 2004 we will try to get back some of the "feel" of the APL K-Center, where everything was better integrated.  This was a comment several people spoke to me about.  Next year, instead of the Pavilion, we will have the Atrium ballroom for all meals, breaks, and the Industrial and Government Exhibits.  We will size the room and consider having the posters in there too.  Also, we will look into having some tables and chairs placed outside of the Amphitheater.  Lastly, for your tired feet, I'm not going to personally take care of them.  Being guest friendly does have its limits!!!!  -- rk]
• The Pavilion was too noisy, and the acoustics there were bad for the panel discussion.  [The acoustics were poor; next year those events will be in the Atrium Ballroom.  -- rk]
• The food was better than I expected, and dealing with downtown D.C. was easier than I expected it to be.
• There needed to be more tables with goodies and coffee on the breaks, but the coffee and break goodies were good.   [The number of break tables will be increased.  This is the first year I didn't receive A LOT of complaints about horrible coffee.  Whew!  -- rk]
• Great conference, large number of technical papers compared to previous years, and the quality was high.
• Food and beverage were *fantastic*.
• It was a pain taking an elevator upstairs.
• Good variety in the talks, kept the conference interesting.
• Hopefully the lunch will be better organized for next year.
• I miss the bags.   [No third party production company for 2004 so we'll examine the budget and hope to return bags as handouts during check-in.  Suggestions?  We've done conference bags, folders, gym bags, and backpacks.  e-mail me with your suggestions   -- rk]
• Buffet line rule-of-thumb: 75 persons max; no scissor tongs.
• To avoid rush-hour, presentations should not begin before 10:00 am nor end before 7:00 pm  [This one will be tough as I also have strong suggestions to end things earlier.  Note that the Reagan Building has a metro stop inside of the building, making access during rush hour tolerable.  I have published metro maps.  Please e-mail me with other suggestions   -- rk]
• Content was good.
• Organization was good.
• Session start and end times should appear in overall schedule!!  [Will do.  -- rk]
• Dedicated poster session should allow 1 minute per poster (87 minutes).  [Excellent suggestion.  The conference was planned with an expected 25 poster papers and a maximum of 30.  The amount of poster papers that came in, with a good number of them late, was a surprise.  We custom built the panels ourselves to be able to accommodate them and get them all to fit and keep the conference affordable.  I know I didn't get enough time at the Poster Session and this will be fixed for next year.  -- rk]
• As far as facilities goes, event separation was somewhat of an issue in that a good conversation meant that I would miss a good deal of a talk or two due to travel time and being informed of session start up (lack of).  [We had chimes playing to signify the next session was about to start.  We'll be sure to coordinate this better for 2004.  The facility does not have a PA system for this function.  -- rk]
• Get better/more microphones (and better distributed).  [Will do; many more people came then expected.  Two weeks before the conference I was told that 195 people had registered, off by about a factor of two from the actual attendance.  The registration team has been replaced for 2004 and registration will go back to klabs.org.  -- rk]
• In comparison to APL this year’s facilities where adequate at best. The biggest issue with the facilities was the remote location for the food and industry booths.
• The content of the conference was great and as always included a very good mix of topics.
• If we could have shuttle service from GSFC to one of the metro stations running every hour or two, instead of just two early and two late runs, it would be a big help for people who can't commit to the whole day but would like to attend portions of the conference.
• Great location! Only down side I heard from people was that parking was a bitch. We'll need to give some explicit "hints" to next year's attendees to take the Metro. We should also scope out some garages for those foolish enough to attempt driving. Also, we should try to figure out something for commuters. You had the GSFC people covered via shuttle bus, but people like Ray had problems. Not sure what to do there.
• More signs directing folks to the conference area in the building. Wasn't hard, but I think it would look better if we left a better bread crumb trail.
• I'm a bit concerned about the distance between the amphitheater and the ball room. Not sure what we can do about it, but it was nice to have EVERYTHING co-located, a la APL.
• Make the panel a bit smaller (say 5?) next year so everyone gets more time to speak. Get some wireless mikes for the audience. Send questions (including those submitted by attendees?) to panelists prior to conference. Maybe skip the intro speeches and jump directly into the questions?
• Food was fantastic! Surprisingly, the lamb dinner was must least favorite (although it was very good).
• Bigger rooms for seminars - we seemed to get a lot of walk-ins on Ray's talk. How did the other seminar go?  [there were a lot of walk-ins as we planned with excess capacity.  IFAR for insufficient margin.  -- rk]
• Pay somebody to put the Shuttle up next year! ;-)  [Wimp.  -- rk]
• Very nice building -- worth the commute.
• Good fix on Wednesday's lunch.
• Encourage lecturers to incorporate humor into their presentations (some were very dry).
• Breaks are good but no need for 1 1/2 hours breaks!  Keep them to ~20 minutes.
• Some presentations are just to "niche"-based or too specific.  After a few slides, the topic is irrelevant to most in the audience.  General topics along with specific design examples (pictures, simulations, plots, data results, applications) are good -- more of these types of presentaitons are needed.  Example: I thought that paper XX was good since it showed real-world cases, but that paper XX was too vague and general.
• Note: Paper B3 (Bergevin) and D0 (Launius) were both excellent.
• Registration on Monday was very disorganized.
• Very satisfied with quality of most of the talks.
• The History Talk and Keith Bergevin's talk were the highlights.
• The XXXXXX talk was a train wreck and I still maintain that MAPLD was not an appropriate forum for this issue, which is a legitimate policy debate.  [Some things work, some don't.  I do think this is an important topic to discuss and it is an issue we deal with everyday on klabs.org and MAPLD.   -- rk]
• This conference was an extremely satisfying experience.  I would like to especially commend the beautiful panels made for the poster sessions.  They look like they took an extraordinary amount of work.  Kudos for the fantastic and professional workmanship.
• DEA is a slack-off!
• Summer4 is Batman!
• LaBel needs to lose his tie and <deleted>
• Rod needs a new shirt.
• rk needs a haircut.
• Rod needs one too.
• Session E needs to be moved to Friday
• Finally, Mad Cow Disease is treatable, and, hopefully, curable!
• Very useful, great job!
• I enjoyed seeing you and attending your conference. You did a great job.
• Rich - Congratulations on a great 2003 MAPLD and a new venue.
• Not enough food; no quality book bags this year; negative speakers; seminars were too elementary; articles too general; too much repeat from previous years; vendors began dismantling their displays too prematurely; waste of time.
• The conference committee needs to weed out more papers.  Some sessions were too long.  The food was insufficient at the breaks especially since there was nothing for breakfast.  To commute to DC takes time and breakfast (bagels, etc.) should have been offered.  To arrive at 8 am I needed to start my commute @ 6 am.  Then waiting until ~1:00 for lunch when the session started @ 8 am and only fruit @ 10:30 is not acceptable.  Just to have a lunch of "fancy food."  If the facility costs that much as to skimp on the services then rethink the facility locale.  there needed to be seating where the breaks were served, as to have conversation w/ those we see infrequently.  I understand there were more than 300 people that attended, the two elevators to to the lunch room was ridiculous.  The industrial exhibit placement was not convenient and fragmented (those two side closets were silly and cramped).  Over all I think it was not well organized.  To sum up, some sessions were too long, placing the industrial exhibits with the buffet line was a bad idea, two elevator access to lunch room was insufficient, too much emphasis was placed on having a "neat location."
• The facility was great but not enough space for poster session given the fact that there were ~100 papers.
• Near ideal location with everything in walking distance.
• Overall the conference was excellent. Most presentations were relevant to my own work, and most presenters were very good.
• My only complaints would be the structure of serving meals (although this was working itself out by the last day) and the disappointing birds of a feather conference on Wednesday. The session consisted of several papers and no discussion! That session was among the things I most looked forward to, and frankly was a terrible disappointment.
• Finally, the software discussion panel was interesting, but very difficult to hear due to the acoustics of the room. A different room would be better for next year (but I loved the Ronald Reagan Building).
• All in all, an excellent job!
• Location/Facility: The new location was great, but the layout of the facility itself could have been better. Having the vendors so separated from the presentations in the auditorium made casual interaction with the vendors difficult. If they could have been in the conference rooms where the Monday seminars were held, they would have been much more accessible. At mealtimes, the elevator-only access to the Pavilion area was a nuisance when all 300+ of us were trying to get up there at once.
• Food: I'm sure this isn't news to you, but while the food itself was great, the food logistics were a problem. It was good, though, to see the catering staff working to improve things after the first day. The main problem seemed to be having many small items (that had to be picked up individually with tongs) all on one big tray (that only two people could access at a time). Lots of small trays would have been better. (Or, in engineering-speak, they need to break the slowest pipeline stage into multiple stages, or provide multiple parallel pipelines, or both.) However, the grab-&-go convenience of the muffins at APL not withstanding, the healthier fruit trays were a welcome change.
• I would have liked more on Actel fuse programmable FPGA's, reflecting current usage in flight, but I know that the Xilinx-type devices hold promise due to their capacity, and finding ways to use them is of great interest.
• The lunch lines were too long but were better for Wednesday.
• Well run, well planned, speakers were very good.  Papers and posters were very informative.  Manning the booth - a lot of good discussions.
• The conference far far exceeded my expectations and the last several years.
• The food and beverages were superb - I gained weight.
• The registration process for exhibitors was simple, easy, and idiot proof.
• The facility was tops, simply tops.
• The location was easy to get to by metro, etc.
• Please understand my evaluation of "met my expectations" as being a 3 has nothing to do with the conference. The overall conference was very good but my "3" is due to I didn't fully understand what was going to be presented at the conference. I had a misconception that the whole conference was going to be things like the Applications Engineers discussions or day 2's SEU presentations. I did get a lot of good information from the conference which I'm going to share with my company. My only suggestion would be to greatly increase the discussions on "lessons learned", keep/increase discussions on SEU, and applications (what to do / not to do type discussion).
• Again, I would like to thank you (Richard, Dr. Rod, and Kevin) for all your help. You've not only helped a program in need but have also changed a culture / way of thinking concerning Firmware devices. I am attempting to "spread the gospel" concerning these devices and am pointing others in your direction.
• More shuttle service from NASA Goddard. Perhaps 2 or 3 shuttles in rotation.
• Save money burning CD-R's.. post conference materials up on the web in .pdf format (with a link to acrobat reader software)  [Note that the materials are on the www and burning CD-ROMs was cheap; they were burned on the home pc.  -- rk]
• Vendor demo's were GREAT! Bring them back please. Career-fair style booths with gifts and gadgets were very cool as well. Just don't isolate the vendors.
• Maybe have some workshops for younger engineers who are just learning about FPGA's and DSP's.  [We had a basic course on technology and architecture a few years ago.   Perhaps we can have that as an additional track next year or in future years.]
• I enjoyed most of the conference (especially Wednesday). There were just a few too many of the academic type presentations. And Thursday was definitely designed to be a "wind-down" day. I appreciate giving the graduate students a chance to "get their feet wet", but it was a bit much. There were, however, some interesting ideas (like emulating ant-colony type of behavior).
• My only suggestion is to position the vendor exhibits closer to the auditorium and posters.
• Congratulations on an excellent Conference.
• Location is a great resource - include a tourist map in registration [note tourist information is available on our conference home page. -- rk]
• Great to see vegetarian food.
• Attendees from outside the US may be reluctant to fly to the US during second week of September.
• Speakers should have control over slide control and not the session chair.
• Please also mention that photo id is required to enter this venue [This was mentioned in several places on the conference www site, in RED. -- rk]
• Great idea to have public internet access to read/send e-mail.
• We waited in line 45 minutes for lunch!
• Try having 2-3 presentations at the same time - for example, allow poster papers to present. Then we can shoose what we want to hear and don't have to suffer through the boring ones.
• There should have been breakfast items, bagels, juice, etc.
• Buffet style serving is too slow for a large group.
• Excellent in all regards.
• Break on Tues., 3:15 to 4:45 (1.5 hours) too long.
• Need better display area for poster papers.
• More microphones for audience questions would also help.
• Overall, this was the best MAPLD yet.
• Need more food lines, less waiting.
• Downtown Washington, D.C. too expensive (Hotel Room). [Note no cars are needed and there is a metro stop in the building, enabling you to stay outside of DC if you wish. -- rk]
• Things were very good this year.
• Clearly, things were crowded for the lunches (maybe it could be handled like dinner).
• Dinner was excellent.
• The invited talks were great.
• Your efforts are appreciated.
• Posters were too crowded and not enough time to review.
• Exhibits were too far away from the presentations, so there was little traffic.
• Projector/sound/hall were awesome; food was very good.
• XXXX XXXXXXXX  talk makes me very uncomfortable. He imply China is an enemy of us. I really don't think so.
• Location and facilities were both superb.
• The jazz music was good, but I'd prefer quiet during dinner so that the table could engage in conversation.
• Also, some people mentioned that a few entree' choices would have been good (probably difficult to make though). [We only get a single choice with dinner but did offer alternate meals upon request. -- rk]
• Requirement to use mikes and only 2 miles discouraged questions.
• How about holding the conference at the Smithsonian museum? [I tried but they do not have enough space. However, we are hoping, for 2005, to hold an evening event there, rent out the entire museum for ourselves. -- rk]
• The industry and government exhibit crowded the buffer area. I think the food service area should be separated from any other events.
• Somehow my registration had been lost but it was resolved fairly quickly with a call to the proper department within our organization to validate payment had been received.
• I enjoyed the conference very much. It was generally well organized.
• The balance between technical content and industry marketing was quite good.
• A number of papers were not really related to the military/aerospace area.
• The food @ lunch Tuesday was my favorite; they improved the line process Wednesday.
• I enjoyed some DC sites, good location.
• Rich - very helpful info and connections.
• Conference serves it purpose to help those "in the trenches" dealing with practical issues of building *reliable* hardware.
• I think illigitimi non carborundum is an excellent motto, and the conference represents the best in hardware and software ethics.
• An open conference should not require photo ID to enter. [That is a facility requirement for security and, unfortunately, is now a fact of life. Other facilities are similar. -- rk]
• MAPLD has a strange mix of technical and marketing presentations. Please try and separate those.
• Great invited speakers.
• In our office our office admin handles all registration and purchases. Your web form did not allow her to register more than on person from our group. [This was an embarrassment and registration will be back on klabs.org for 2004, a stupid, simple, and reliable www site. -- rk]
• Time very well spent!
• Sometimes tight on space, refreshment and meal lines, congestion were down side (sometimes). Refreshments pulled too early by caterers, sometimes.
• Some talks not of highest caliber, topic too basic or not of general interest and significance.
• Serving too slow.
• Food quality excellent 0 food service needs improvement.
• Industrial exhibit better on same floor as conference.
• Conference better than I expected!
• Food/beverages - good selection! [credit goes to the wife -- rk]
• Going to Pavilion was difficult - too squishy waiting in line!
• Food lines were too long! More tables!
• Other than that small complaint, everything was great!
• Food line was terrible, though it got better later on. I also recommend trays by the food line.
• Richard: Thanks again for organizing and running the 2003 MAPLD conference. You did a great job in running the conference, and putting together all of the material.
• The posters were planned in a bad way. I had problem to find the posters I was interested in. I would advise to organize them after the paper numbers in the program and also mark the posters with their numbers.
• It was smaller than anticipated. [It was *way* larger than I anticipated. -- rk]
• The FPGA Reconfigurable Computing seminar felt like a sales pitch for the companies that are making the hardware, SRC, Starbridge, etc.
• Richard Katz is one of the most insightful men yet, hardest working man in the business. Keep up the great work and enthusiasm for it. [I hope my boss reads this one. -- rk]
• The registration website was a disaster. I had to register 4 people to attend in order to support our booth and presentation involvement. When trying to do so, I had repeated problems with the registration site. After contacting the conference coordinator, I found out that I could not register these folks this way due to a technical glitch with the website. I ended up having to register them manually. In the manual process I requested that they process the registration fee in one lump payment. Instead they ended up hitting my company credit card 4 separate times. [Registration on klabs.org for MAPLD 2004. -- rk]
• ... In trying to get the invoice paid, I had call the organization handling the payment process 2 times and could not get a return call. Finally after about a 2 week process, I finally got a call. I received a voicemail at just a little before 12NOON and was requested to call back before the person went home for the day at 3 p.m. East Coast time. Now being on the West Coast, that would make it NOON my time when the person went home for the day. This back and forth carried on for an additional week. I would think that if you having attendees from around the world, the work hours for the contact individuals would be someone extended to accommodate the people who are different time zones. But apparently not. [This is unacceptable. -- rk]
• Government registration was a problem for AIAA (Government code not activated by AIAA).  Otherwise superb conference.

   

Topics for MAPLD 2004:

• More of the same - updated.
• War stories, lessons learned, digital logic design.
• "An application engineer's view" was very interesting.  I would recommend giving Actel & Xilinx 20 minutes EACH.  there are a lot of pitfalls that Design Engineers should be made aware of when using these FPGAs.  Another topic could be "Proper Design Techniques (synchronous vs. asynchronous)"
• SEU and SET; modeling single event effects.
• Alternatives to TMR.
• Some of the papers were outstanding and should have become presentations.
• Quantum Computing
• This one was good; no change.
• From HDL to PLD - How to make "clean" PLD
• Session on advanced HW architectures beyond today's FPGAs.
• I would like to see more application specific talks (like the Application Engineer's View) and more practical lessons learned.
• I found the papers on current technology and lessons learned very useful.
• The academic research papers are interesting but are usually still in primitive stages and don't relate to the everyday work we are doing in the industry.
• The "software is hard" section could use more time as demonstrated by the fact that conversations (with audience participation) lasted much longer than the planned time.  Also, the major topics were only lightly touched on here and an entire day of hashing out these differences may be required.  That panel plus others are presumably the best group to come to a consensus and one is needed!  This forum could be a stepping stone to other standard [? bad handwriting!] effects.
• Hardening measures for PLD's - High altitude A/C are in need of SEE hardened electronics
• Since software has become such a controversial and hotly debated topic I would suggest this be included in the topics. The focus should be on real-time embedded software for space craft processing. At the least we should have an expert in the field give a detail talk addressing the issues that came up during this years panel session.
• Methods of managing complex logic systems w/ multiple chips w/ multiple designers.   How does a system designer control the overall efficiency/reliability of such a design when each designer has different methodologies and backgrounds?
• We've heard from many Apollo-era designers, how about actual Shuttle designers from the 70's? [Excellent point - great minds think alike!  That is already being worked with the contacts I made this year!!! -- rk]
• Info session on FPAA (Field Programmable Analog Arrays) would be neat.  [I'll try, we've had a few in prior years. -- rk]
• Breaks were a *little* long.  It would be nice to finish by 5:30 pm.
• Lunches opened late.
• Pace was good!  15 min/speech was perfect.
• I'd be very interested in hearing Xilinx & Altera presentations on run-time reconfiguration.
• I would also be great to see the customer community (AF, Navy, NSA, NASA, DARPA) presenting a "wish list" of reconfigurable topics that are of interesting to them.
• New cows.
• rk should not chair any particular session.
• No oral assignment unless full presentation is deemed worthy.
• Somehow, figure out a way to give the exhibitors the floor for 5-10 minutes each.
• High integrity systems design considerations.
• More seminars; more technical presentations; greater focus on problem solving; refereed papers - don't just take anything offered to bulk up the conference.
• Design verification methods for radiation hardness and fault tolerance.
• More emphasis on lessons learned.
• Fault tolerance with FPGAs would be an excellent topic. I'd suggest lengthening the session to at least 1 hour, and making it an open forum for discussion and exchange of ideas, rather than just extra paper presentations.
• Reconfigurable Computing BOAF Session: I was extremely disappointed with the RC BOAF session this year, as the entire time period was given over to presentations. The first BOAF session two years ago had no presentations at all, and I found it to be the highlight of the conference that year. Last year the session started with one or two presentations, and the remaining discussion time was disappointingly brief. This year there was no discussion time whatsoever. Please keep the RC BOAF as part of the program, but next year I would strongly advocate a return to the all-discussion format, and leave the presentations for the regular conference sessions.
• Also, the main auditorium is too big a venue for that kind of free-form discussion; the classrooms that were used at APL were much better for the BOAFs. In addition, their separation from the main auditorium meant that only those people with a serious interest in the BOAF topic went out of their way to attend, which I think also improved the previous years' sessions.
• Radiation effects and mitigation
• NASA plans and directions for future missions
• Aerospace Industry Outlook
• The lessons learned talks were good.  Talks that have general engineering processes.
• Perhaps keep same theme but see what a year later looks like.
• Include information on test and validation of reconfigurable FPGAs.
• SEU's discussions should continue
• Applications Engineers from the vendors should be increased dramatically.
• Lessons Learned so others do not repeat failures of others
• I suggest more "panel" type of discussions -- perhaps in smaller interest-driven splinter groups. This would incorporate a theme, such as "Why is Software so Hard?" and a few "experts" to catalyze the discussion. I sensed that many people wanted to join in the Panel discussion, or at least comment, but the banquet venue was too big and formal. One topic might be (for veteran FPGA engineers) "After Schematics: Migrating to HDL", war-stories, tips, etc.
• SBIR corner in posters and exhibits
• New Session: SBIR projects and partnering opportunities.
• Analog and mixed signal issues for space electronics, e.g. HHAL-ams, verilog-A
• How about some actual military applications from the military's point of view. [Please encourage your military friends to present. -- rk]
• Would like to hear how FPLD's have solved DMSMS problems.
• Identifying optimal system mitigation techniques for radiation hardening.
• More industrial - this what we did, why and what went right/wrong.
• Fewer academic papers and vendor sales pitches.
• The birds of a feather session by Ken should be kept, but he needs more support.
• Rather than having more talks for the BoF Sessions, I would suggest that groups provide a brief overview of their current work so that people are aware of the research that is going on more broadly within the community. Having the sessions in more of a conference room might better stimulate discussions.
• I would like to see more RC implementations that are geared towards military applications, such as MIL-STD interfaces, munitions controllers, micro air vehicle/unmanned air vehicle controllers, and computational fluid dynamics analysis.
• Software engineering - see Steve McConnel's book "S/W Engineering."
• The best presentations were by seasoned engineers about "school of hard knocks" such as D3. Also really enjoyed talk by Roger Launius.
• Many academic type talks just went on too long.
• More on reconfigurable computing (1/2 day inadequate).
• We all are trying to implement what mathematicians have theorized before us. A good mathematician speaker might be nice.
  Have FPGA vendors provide presentations on what they are working on to provide more space products that can be used by us at NASA
• Verification and validation methodologies.
• Although not yet required on military/government programs, it would seem it would soon adopt the DO-254 RTCA design assurance guidance for airborne electronics. [I was hoping the gentleman from the FAA would get into this on the panel but it didn't happen. I would like to have this addressed next year. -- rk]
• VHDL design and verification methodologies for high reliability systems. [We will have a full day seminar on for VHDL synthesis for hi-rel systems next year. -- rk]
• Implementing high performance, high reliability processor cores in FPGAs.
• Is hardware becoming soft?/If software is hard, how do we prevent hardware from becoming soft?
• I would be very interested in a seminar or session on sneak analysis methodologies/techniques -- especially in the domain branching from hardware <==> software. I think we have major holes here in the industry. Would not mind helping with circuit side of this.
• The 10 most common mistakes that reduce reliability.
• Tools that check for low reliability design constructs.
• Wish list for PLD tools/methods that we need bunch vendors don't supply (maybe academics will pick up on it).
• Overall topics are good, raise the bar higher though. For example, still a lot of papers on Virtex designs, a four year old technology.
• Design flow - verification.
• Lessons learned - very important.
• Try to eliminate eccentrics - off the subject like that .....
• Logic design, evaluation, design guidelines, rules, recommendations, does and don'ts for SEU mitigation and immunity ==> how to analyze and evaluate a design for SEU (and catastrophe) immunity (or susceptibility).
• Physics of the semi technology: - overview plus presentations by major FPGA vendors (Actel, Altera, Xilinx).
• Have me and my husband lead an Intellectual property discussion! There were lots of questions and I think it would be an interesting session.
• Novel Architectures for Partial Reconfiguration (PR).
• Integrated Development Tools for PR.
• Electronic lead retrieval.
• More topics on radiation hardened requirements, techniques particularly total ionization dose and effes on programmable devices.
• Switched fabric interconnect for FPGA reconfigurable computing.
• I kept hearing about the "high level language" approach to VHDL. I keep thinking this level of abstraction is dangerous and maybe a refresher on "VHDL for Synthesis" or "Writing self-checking test benches" would be a better topic. I would be willing to teach either. [Your name? -- rk]
• "Hardware, why is it so soft?" No, just kidding. As a vendor, I'm always curious to know what you science types need of us. Is XXXXX the best FPGA platform device? Are there enough people like XXX XXXXX around to teach VHDL?
• Less space, more military.  Secure communications.  Radar processing with FPGAs.
• I think a panel would be much more useful than the "birds of a feather."  The auditorium was much too large and intimidating for an informal discussion.  Please contact me if you need more  thoughts on the "birds of a feather" session.
• Scientific reconfigurable computing.
  
   

General Comments:

• Rich, First of all...great job with the conference. It was well run and well structured. I enjoyed many of the technical papers presented.
• Rich, Thanks again for making it possible for me to attend the conference this year. Once again, I found it very informative and thoroughly enjoyable. You did an excellent job.
• Thank you for organizing a great conference. It was very stimulating and thought-provoking.
• Very convenient location.
• Facility was excellent.
• Thanks for all the work expended in making it a significant & memorable event.
• This is my first year and the conference exceeded my expectations.  Great Job!
• Quite a few of the poster sessions were actually more interesting than the papers presented at the conference.  Might want to look at the papers presented a bit closer.
• The lessons learned for NASA (Columbia Accident) was great!
• Great vendor participation - keep it up!
• Good and location are good.
• If I were to change anything, I would try to have parallel tracks going at once so that more groups could present.  Posters are a necessary outlet but the more interesting discussions we have with the entire group the better.  [This is a bit problematic.  The facility has one good auditorium.  Also, the number of papers that we had, well over twice as many as 2002, was a surprise.  We do have to plan these out over a year in advance and we'll take a look at the paper submission total for 2004 and consider this for 2005.  In 2002 we had about 47 papers and parallel tracks would not work  -- rk]
• What is the AIAA's role in this as co-host? They just seemed to sit there and read the USA Today.
• The new location was perfect.
• Breaks too long in the afternoon on Tuesday, in the morning on Wednesday, and on Wednesday afternoon.
• Exhibits should be adjacent to the poster area and close to session area.  [Fixed for 2004.  -- rk]
• Exhibit hours should be better defined and there should be some dedicated time for them.  [There was a dedicated time for the exhibits, during the break for the Tuesday afternoon session.  We'll make sure to make this time more visible.  -- rk]
• It would be nice to have a few additional computer internet stations for those of use who don't have internet access at our hotels.
• Overall - it was a great conference & I learned a lot.  [Thanks; that's what this is all about.  -- rk]
• Program should based on abstracts as you have been doing.  Select oral presentations based on submitted presentations.
• If possible, could you give a better breakdown of exhibit times.  The schedule indicated all day on 9/10/03 and everyone was breaking down about 3:00.  We need to have a good idea of the schedule so that flight can be booked appropriately.  [The exhibits were supposed to be open through dinner.  I too missed out on exhibit time and am less than pleased.  The people who shut the exhibits down without authorization have been fired.  -- rk]
• Great job Rich!  I personally enjoyed the invited speaker from the National Air & Space Museum about "Post-Columbia" NASA.
• DC-area location is good.
• Vendor booths are good.
• Presentations, overall, are good, but as above, some are too specific and don't illustrate the unique use of a PLD that is "useful" to the audience.
• Logistics of lunch and exhibits need to be fine-tuned.  LOOONG LINES.  No tables to eat lunch on Monday for seminars.
• Very disappointed w/ Birds of a Feather Sessions this year.  Started 30 min. late on Tuesday and there was no chance for discussion on Wednesday.
• As for scheduling, I'm in favor of shorter breaks and finishing earlier and allowing people time to visit the industry exhibits at the end of the the day.
• The spaces where the exhibits were installed were claustrophobic.
• It was nice to see an Altera presence this year.
• Get rid of the cows, keep the lamb.
• Registration process should be graded 0 for giving everybody badges with AIAA insignia.
• More bus runs from NASA to the metro.
• Rich, First of all...great job with the conference. It was well run and well structured. I enjoyed many of the technical papers presented.
• General comment on Space Shuttle discussion: Outsource a new design to Russia - much less investment will be required.  (Although it takes a Cold War syndrome to disappear).
• Print your poster on high quality paper (perhaps with a high cotton content) and not paper you take from the photocopier.  This looks cleaner as it doesn't wrinkle.
• Severe decline over previous years; considerably less technical; poor vendor representation; opinionated presentations; difficult location; boring presentations; AIAA added nothing except bureaucracy.
• My personal opinion - the banquet menu was not a good choice.  Roasted lamb is not my favorite dish and seemed to be the case for other sitting at my table.   Otherwise, the food exceeded my expectations. [Alternate menus were offered.  It's hard to pick one thing that satisfies everyone.  -- rk]
• Make a note about the special meals for those who need it on the registration form.
• Since your conference attendance numbers will grow, you might want to consider pre-registration, so that the registration process doesn't become a mess [We will have a new group doing registration next year.  -- rk]
• More internet kiosks.  [That was our new desktop computer, anyone care to make a donation?  ;-)  -- rk]
• Perhaps some evening entertainment representing world's culture.. a sign of respect and acknowledgement of the people venturing from all over the world to come to the conference.
• Don't make dinner so late.. perhaps 5pm would work.
• Thanks for arranging this all!
• Congratulations on an excellent conference.
• Need an overall agenda in the front of the "record" handouts.
• This has been my first visit to MAPLD, an interesting conference.
• Very well organized conference - well done to Richard, Kevin, and co.
• Why don't you get a space memorabilia/shop to have a desk so they sell space accessories?
• Please give the presenters a clicker to advance the slides. I am so tired of hearing, "Next slide please."
• Please include an "ssh" implementation (openssh?) on the internet computer - this is necessary for some of us to read our e-mail [Excellent idea! --rk]
• Overall, as this was my first MAPLD, it was very well informed (and entertained) by both the session chairs and the presentations.
• Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this event.
• Pavilion made me uncomfortable with no exit except the elevator (single point of failure, a big problem if suddenly 300 people want to leave). [Note that there was redundant elevators although there could be a common mode failure or a failure due to a common induced environment. There was a third level of safety with a set of stairs. -- rk]
• Don't put too much political things in an academic conference.
• Make more experimental/theoretical type of presentations only 15 minutes (or 10) - this would allow more time for questions for those talks that stimulate the audience.
• Please: no more "how many multipliers can I squeeze into a Virtex FPGA?" talks
• Registration software is inadequate. Took 3 tries on two different systems for success. Coworker thought he had registered, but no record (Do not use cookies or Java). [registration is going back to klabs.org next year, a simple and stupid www site. -- rk]
• Very good conference. Continue the same focus on technical papers.
• Good talk by Xilinx on SEUs.
• Great talk on FPGA redesign of the missile microprocessor.
• Thanks for everyone's involved efforts in creating this open forum and opportunity for exchanging information.
• I am not an expert on architectures, some stuff over my head and sometimes motivation for studies presented unclear.
• Would suggest more poster vs. oral paper presentation time (personal bias) because then I can ask a series of questions to gain better understanding.
• Possibly separate sessions for technical vs. allowed marketing talks.
• Prefer trade show closer to tech sessions.
• Thanks for the CD. Better than a book!
• Need to get your act together with the session chairs. Absolutely embarrassing that presenters have to introduce themselves or come down off the podium to change slides because the session chair is not paying attention. Invest in a remote clicker so that the presenter can flip slides themselves without having to say "next slide" 30 times.
• Overall the quality of the presentations is improving and is gaining more respect in the community. However, there are still some presentations that don't seem to have much to do with PLD's (the Intellectual Property one was way off) and there are still a few presentations that make unsubstantiated claims. Tight technical committee scrutiny and more time and encouragement for healthy, constructive questions will this. [We will be getting the presentations in earlier next year to take care of the first part of this comment. For the second half, session chairs are instructed to let healthy Q&A go on as long as it makes sense. -- irk]
• Finally, the schedule was very bizarre. Starting time different each day. Some breaks 30 min, some 1:15. Sometimes 3 presentations and then a break and sometimes 6 papers in a row w/ no break. Overall breaks were too long and a lot of people were bailing to go to the Smithsonian. 25 min breaks are fine when not an Industry exhibit break.
• Sound system on dinner panel could be better.
• Please have more internet PC's.
• The quality of the presenters in the way they spoke ranged from very good to terrible. Some of the foreign speakers were just incomprehensible with broken sentences and was a waste of time.
• Good conference. Can see the amount of effort and the dedication this conference chairman puts into it.
• Keep future meetings @ Reagan Center.
• Require all acronyms to be defined at beginning of presentations.
• It was great, but I like having control of switching to next slide myself.
• Many thanks for a nice conference.
• The industry keeps moving to this high level of abstraction and I don't know how it will completely verify this new working environment. The "ways of old" are being lost!
• My business partner and I met some very good contacts in the business. There should be some fruitful, long-term business and work from MAPLD 2003.

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Last Revised: October 26, 2003
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