FCCM 2021 Call for Papers

UPDATE: FCCM 2021 will be a virtual conference with optional in-person attendance if the state of the pandemic permits. No authors will be required to attend in person, but at least one author will be required to register and attend the virtual conference. Failure to present (either virtually or in person) at the conference may result in the removal of the submission from IEEE Xplore.

The IEEE International Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines (FCCM) is the original and premier forum for presenting and discussing new research related to computing that exploits the unique features and capabilities of FPGAs and other reconfigurable hardware. Submissions are solicited on the following topics related to Field Programmable Custom Computing Machines (FCCMs) including, but not limited to:

Architectures
- Novel reconfigurable architectures, including overlay architectures
- Architectures for high performance and/or low power computing
- Security assessment and enhancements for reconfigurable computing
- Specialized memory systems including volatile, non-volatile, and hybrid memory subsystems
- Emerging technologies with in-field reconfiguration abilities
- Clusters, data centers, or large systems of reconfigurable devices
- Heterogeneous programmable architectures
Abstractions, Programming Models, and Tools
- Abstractions, programming models, interfaces, and runtimes, including virtualization
- New languages and design frameworks for spatial or heterogeneous applications
- High-level synthesis and designer productivity in general
- Software-Defined-systems (e.g. radio, networks, frameworks for new domains)
- Customizable soft processors systems
Reconfiguration
- Run-time management of reconfigurable hardware
- System resilience/fault tolerance for reconfigurable hardware
- Evolvable, adaptable, or autonomous reconfigurable computing systems
- Security assessment and enhancement of run-time reconfiguration
Applications
- Data center or cluster with reconfigurable applications
- New uses of run-time reconfiguration in applications-specific systems
- Applications that utilize reconfigurable technology for performance and efficiency, and particularly submissions that make comparisons with other highly parallel architectures such as GPUs or DSPs
- Novel use of state-of-the-art commercial FPGAs

Submission Website:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fccm21

Important Dates:

All deadlines apply to the Anywhere on Earth (UTC – 12) timezone


Abstracts Due (All Papers) January 4, 2021
Submissions Due (All Papers) January 11, 2021
Rebuttal Period February 8 - 12, 2021
Notification of Acceptance (All Papers) March 8, 2021
Demo Night Submissions March 22, 2021 (No Extensions)
Notification of Acceptance (Demo Night) March 29, 2021
Camera-Ready Submission April 5, 2021
Early Registration Deadline TBD
Conference May 9 - May 12, 2021

Organizing Committee:

General Chair Christophe Bobda (University of Florida)
Program Chair Greg Stitt (University of Florida)
Publications Chair Jakub Szefer (Yale University)
Finance Chair Andrew Schmidt (University of Southern California ISI)
Workshops Chair Laura Pozzi (USI Lugano)
Publicity and Website Chair Xinfei Guo (NVIDIA)
Expo and Demo-Night Chair Gabriel Weisz (Microsoft)
Panel Chair Farinaz Koushanfar (UCSD)
Sponsorship Chair Grace Zgheib (Intel)
Local Arrangement Chair TBD

Paper Types:

Submissions can be made for any of the three paper types:

- Traditional technical papers that introduce and evaluate new technologies. These papers must have strong empirical results and must address major challenges of the corresponding problem.
- Practical papers that make significant practical contributions, including industry papers, as opposed to introducing and evaluating new technologies. For example, new tools built on existing technologies that help practitioners better use FPGAs. Practical papers will be reviewed based on significance and technical soundness of the practical contribution.
- Work-in-progress papers that present promising ideas that are too preliminary to solve all related technical challenges, but still provide some empirical data to make a convincing argument about the potential contribution after maturation.

Paper Formats:

- Long papers are limited to 8 pages. Short papers are limited to 4 pages. The long/short formats apply to technical papers and practical papers. Work-in-progress papers should be submitted as short papers for the initial submission with a (WIP) prefix on the title, and will be given an optional 2 additional pages after acceptance. Submissions accepted as posters will have a 1-page extended abstract.
- Page restrictions for all formats exclude references, which may use additional pages. Submissions violating the formatting requirements may be automatically rejected. Do not submit the same work as more than one of the formats.
- With the exception of work-in-progress papers, accepted papers will have the same page lengths as initial submissions. Short papers will have short oral presentations and long papers may have long or short presentations based on committee decisions on time required to present the material.
- All submissions should be written in English. An online submission link will be available on the FCCM website. Papers must conform to the US letter-sized IEEE conference proceedings format to be reviewed and published. A conformant LaTeX template is available here and a Microsoft Word template is available here. Overleaf users can find the LaTeX template here.

Review Process:

- FCCM uses a double blind reviewing system. Manuscripts must not identify authors or their affiliations. Authors are encouraged to cite their own work but must not implicitly identify themselves. For example, references that clearly identify the authors (“We build on our previous work…”) should be written as “This work builds on XYZ [citation]”. Do not put a “deleted for double-blind” entry in the reference section.
- In the case of widely-available Open Source software, authors should cite the website(s) but not claim to own them. Authors should also remember to mask grant numbers and other government markings during the review process. Note that there are resources to blind open-source repositories for review such as: https://github.com/tdurieux/anonymous_github. Papers that attempt to identify authors or leverage prior work or institutional support for a competitive advantage in the peer review process will not be considered. Placing a preliminary version of the unpublished paper on arXiv is not disqualifying, but it is also not encouraged; just because a paper can be unblinded by active search will not undermine the spirit of the double-blind review. Artifacts, including open-source designs and tools are encouraged; if there are questions about how to handle blind-review, contact the program chair.
- FCCM 2021 includes a rebuttal phase. Specific questions from reviewers will be made available by February 8. Authors have the option to provide an up to 500-word response by February 13th. Reviewers will consider the responses during final paper deliberations.

Simultaneous Submissions:

Papers must not be simultaneously under review or waiting to appear at another conference or in a journal, and must not be essentially the same as any paper that has been previously published. If a paper contains text or technical content that is similar to a previously published or submitted paper, that other paper should be cited in the FCCM submission, and the differences should be made clear.

Reviewer Conflicts：

Authors must register any program-committee conflicts as they submit their paper. Conflicts can include those that have co-authored a paper in the past 3 years, those that have current or shared institutional affiliation within the past year, or other situations in which the relationship would prevent a reviewer from being objective. Note that if an undeclared conflict is discovered, or a conflict is declared in an attempt to “game” the review process, the submission may be rejected. If you believe you may have a conflict with the program chair, please contact the program chair well in advance of the submission deadline.

Best Paper Award and a Special Section for the Best FCCM 2021 Papers in ACM TRETS:

FCCM 2021 will continue the tradition of having a best long and short paper award. We will also invite the authors of the best papers to extend their work to be considered for publication in a special section of ACM’s Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems (TRETS) for FCCM 2021.

Special Note to Authors:

- Across all topics (and especially for application papers) successful manuscripts will include sufficient details to reproduce the results presented (e.g., full part numbers, software versions). Application papers should not just be an implementation of an application on an FPGA, but should show how reconfigurable technology is leveraged by the application, and should ideally contain insights and lessons that can be carried forward into future designs. Additional suggestions and guidelines are available on www.fccm.org. See the ACM/TCFPGA Hall-of-Fame (hof.tcfpga.org) and the set of previous FCCM Best Paper winners (wiki.tcfpga.org/FCCMBest) for outstanding examples of FCCM papers.

Questions：

Questions about this call, submissions, and potential submissions should be directed to the program chair, Greg Stitt.