fpga-forum

Max will be presenting a very interesting opening keynote at this year’s FPGA-forum in September:

FPGAs and Other Awesome Technologies for the 21st Century

One of the great things about being Max is that — since he writes about high-tech topics for various online publications, coupled with his providing technical writing and consulting services to a cornucopia of high-tech companies — he gets to hear about many of the latest and greatest technologies before they appear on the market.

Even better, Max is not tied to any subject sector or technological territory; instead, he’s free to meander around gathering noteworthy nuggets of knowledge and tasty tidbits of trivia. He may start the day learning about a new artificial intelligence neural network processor, after which he might find himself up to his armpits in virtual reality, and just a little later he could be feasting his eyes on next-generation camera-sensor combos that are only 1 mm thick for use in state-of-the-art machine vision systems — and all of this before he’s had his breakfast.

In this keynote presentation, in addition to the latest and greatest in FPGA space, Max says we will take a tour around a curated selection of the weird and wonderful things he’s been exposed to recently, focusing on anything that has made him exclaim, “Ooh, Shiny!” Max also notes that, as is usually the case in his presentations, we will be leaping from topic to topic with the agility of young mountain goats, so he urges attendees to dress appropriately and responsibly.

Also check out:

Clive Maxfield is back at FPGA-forum 2022 – FPGA-forum

FPGA-forum 2022 is postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic

The FPGA-forum committee has decided that FPGA-forum 2022 unfortunately will be postponed until Wednesday 7^th to Thursday 8^th September 2022.

We have had good flexibility from the Hotel and could have had a free cancellation as late as early January, and thus we were evaluating whether to wait until January with a final decision. Now, with the minimum 4 weeks of new and strong restrictions in Norway, we could no longer wait with the decision to postpone FPGA-forum 2022.

We consider the probability very low that the pandemic is

a) significantly reduced early in January, and

b) not going to increase to an unacceptable level again after the 4 weeks strong restriction period

We also consider the probability high that even if the pandemic was reduced significantly early in January, lots of potential participants would be very hesitant to register for the event and take part in it.

The speakers are the most important contributors to FPGA forum, and they invest a lot of time in making good presentations. Some of these would typically start preparing their presentations these days, and that is an important reason for making the final decision now.

We really hope the pandemic will become weaker soon, but as a minimum we assume that seasonal trends from 2020 and 2021 will continue in 2022. For that reason – and to keep well away from the summer vacations, we have found early September to be a good time to arrange FPGA-forum this year. That should hopefully allow the FPGA-community to safely meet physically again – without the risk of cancellation.

We have already got confirmation from our opening keynote Clive “Max” Maxfield that he will be here in September 😊.

We will now get in touch with the other presenters, including our two closing keynotes. Hopefully, they will all be able to hold their presentation in September. That would really be great, as the current list of presentations is both varied and very interesting.

We *very much* look forward to meeting the Norwegian FPGA-community in September.

Clive Maxfield was presenting the Opening keynote at FPGA-forum 2012 – with some of the best feedback ever throughout the history of FPGA-forum.

The FPGA-forum committee was looking for something special to mark that we are back – after the cancellation last year due to Covid-19. The choice was really simple. Clive is a great combination of an international FPGA guru, a visionary and an entertainer. The perfect Opening Keynote for one of the first FPGA conferences to be back after the pandemic.

We really look forward to meeting and listening to him again 🙂

Check out his post on coming back to FPGA-forum

FPGA-forum 2022 will be arranged in Trondheim Wednesday and Thursday 9-10 February 2022, with workshops Tuesday 8. February.

We look foward to meeting you all again – as before – for a real live event in Trondheim. We expect and hope that Covid-19 will be mainly over by then and that we can meet physically. We will of course adapt to any potential regulations and recommendations from the authorities.

The committe has started looking for Opening and Closing Keynotes, so feel free to come up with suggestions.

Please note that FPGA-forum will not be streamed or recorded. This is because networking and meeting each other physically is a very importantg aspect of FPGA-forum.

FPGA-forum . Where the FPGA community meets 🙂

Onsdag 17. februar kl. 16:00 til 17:00 på Zoom:

https://uio.zoom.us/j/65983101854?pwd=NGtZTTVxSnR6RTlKbzNlV3ducC92dz09

NOTE: This event will be in English to allow both candidates to understand everything.
The event is free and we do of course hope to gather people from both the industry and academia.

There will be no FPGA-forum in 2021, but we decided to run the Master thesis award, as we see this as an important encouragement to write FPGA-related master’s thesises, and thus we can of course not skip 2021,,,

We have the following approximate agenda for this event:
16:00 Welcome – with a brief status from the industry
16:15 Introduction of nominated master’s thesis and the assessment committee
16:20 Announcement and presentation of the award
16:25 Interview with award winner and supervisor
16:30 Video presentation w/ Q&A
16:45 Exchange of experience on FPGA teaching and master’s thesis completion during the pandemic
17:00 End

There are two candidates (completed in 2020):
Kristina Thue: “Accelerating compact CNN models for image segmentation using Vivado HLS”
Mohamed Ismail: “HW/SW Co-design Implementation of Hyperspectral Image Classification Algorithm”

Both at the Institute for electronic systems at NTNU, and both supervised by associate professor Milica Orlandic.

Hope to “see” you there.

The FPGA-forum committee has decided that there will unfortunately not be any FPGA-forum 2021.

The crucial assessment was that, as late as the end of 2020, we will not know anything about the pandemic situation in February 2021 or what advice and rules will apply then. Many decisions would have to be made and a lot of work done before that in order to hold the forum.

The speakers are the most important contributors to FPGA forum, and they invest a lot of time in making good presentations. We don’t want this work to be wasted. The exhibitors are also an important part of the FPGA forum, and they also put in a lot of preparation, so here of course, the same applies. In the middle of August we asked the exhibitors about their opinions and intentions, and received a clear feedback that the probability of not participating was quite high due to Covid 19.

We hope that the situation will improve and be under control in February next year, but even with such a wishful scenario, we believe that we would still end up with a significantly reduced FPGA forum both with respect to presenters, exhibitors and participants, – and we don’t want to waste the goodwill of all those contributing to a great FPGA-forum. The committee therefore unanimously agreed that a cancellation unfortunately was the right decision.

An on-line event has been considered, but since much of the value for the participants is network building, the social setting and the exhibition, and since from experience there will be significantly fewer listeners per presentation, we do not think an on-line event would be a good solution for FPGA-forum.

In conclusion, we are very happy that FPGA-forum 2020 was arranged as planned – just prior to the Covid 19 close-down, and we are now twice as much looking forward to FPGA-forum 2022 (9-10 February) 😊

FPGA-forum-komiteen har bestemt at det dessverre ikke blir noe FPGA-forum i 2021. Den avgjørende vurderingen var at vi uansett så sent som utgangen av 2020 ikke vil vite noe om smitte-situasjonen i februar 2021 eller hvilke råd og regler som vil gjelde da. Mange avgjørelser må tas før det, samtidig som mye arbeid vil bli utført før det.

Foredragsholderne er de viktigste bidragsyterne til FPGA-forum, og disse investerer mye tid i å lage gode presentasjoner. Vi ønsker derfor at dette arbeidet ikke skal være bortkastet. Utstillerne er også en viktig del av FPGA-forum, og de legger også inn mye forberedelser, så her gjelder selvfølgelig det samme. Vi sendte for øvrig ut en forespørsel til utstillerne i midten av august for å lodde stemningen, og fikk da en klar tilbakemelding om at de fleste var relativt skeptiske mhp Covid 19 og deltagelse.

Vi håper jo at smittesituasjonen vil være godt på bedringens vei i februar neste år, men om så skulle være, så tror vi at vi allikevel ville endt opp med et sterkt redusert FPGA-forum både mhp forelesere, utstillere og deltagere, og vi ønsker ikke å misbruke godviljen til alle rundt FPGA-forum. Alle i komiteen var derfor helt enige i at en avlysning derfor dessverre var riktig.

En on-line event har blitt vurdert, men ettersom mye av verdien for deltagerne er nettverksbygging, det sosiale og utstillingen, samt at det erfaringsmessig blir vesentlig færre tilhørere pr. presentasjon, så synes vi ikke dette ville være en god løsning.

Avslutningsvis er vi veldig glade for at vi rakk FPGA-forum 2020 før nedstenging, og vi gleder oss nå dobbelt så mye til FPGA-forum 2022 (9-10 februar) 😊

FPGA-forum 2021 will be arranged at Royal Garden in Trondheim February 10-11 (Wedn-Thur)

(Workshops will be arranged Tuesday February 12)

www.fpga-forum.no/program/