Congratulations to Professor Jason Cong on the induction of his paper, “DAOmap: A Depth-Optimal Area Optimization Mapping Algorithm for FPGA Designs,” into the FPGA and Reconfigurable Computing Hall of Fame, Class of 2026.
Cong co-authored the paper with his then-student Deming Chen, who is now the Abel Bliss Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Originally published in the proceedings of the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design in 2004, the paper details DAOmap, a new method that arranges look-up tables on chips.
The Hall of Fame endorsement notes that “DAOmap represents a new breakthrough solution. Building on cut-enumeration techniques and effective area propagation from prior work, Chen and Cong introduced several key innovations in DAOmap to tackle this more challenging and practical optimization problem, including differentiated cut-selection strategies for delaycritical and non-critical nodes, solution-space search that incorporates both local and global optimality information, and an iterative cut-selection method that explicitly accounts for node-duplication effects. Notably, the iterative cut-selection technique with node-duplication awareness has since become a proven approach adopted in modern FPGA synthesis tools.”
The paper has since been cited over 200 times, including citations in eight separate patents. This also marks the second consecutive year a paper co-authored by Professor Cong has received this prestigious recognition, as well as being the sixth paper of his inducted overall.
For the original paper and official endorsement, please visit: Hall of Fame Inductees.