Minutes of SIG-CHARME kick-off meeting: September 27, 1999 Written by Dominique Borrione A SIG-CHARME kick-off meeting was held on the first evening of the CHARME'99 Conference, in Bad Herrenalb. Around 30 persons participated. The meeting was publicized ahead of the conference, and was open to all interested persons. The initial position paper on SIG- CHARME was distributed with the conference material. The meeting started with a summary of the history of the CHARME and FMCAD conferences, and the mention of the closely related events: TPHOL, TPCD, CAV, Workshops in Sweden, ... The position paper, the additional contributions of Mary Sheeran (unable to come to CHARME'99) and the support of IFIP WG10.5 to the creation of SIG- CHARME were distributed and orally presented to the participants. FMCAD'2000 will be held in Austin, Texas, November 1-3. It will be immediately preceeded with a workshop on ACL2 in Austin, October 30-31. Steve Johnson and Warren Hunt, co-chairs of FMCAD'2000, distributed a preliminary Call for Papers. Thomas Kropf reviewed the preparation and organization of the venue of CHARME'99, the coordination and exchange of PC members with FMCAD'2000, and asked for volunteers to organize the conference CHARME'2001. After some discussion about the dates, it was agreed that it would be a good idea to organize CHARME'2001 jointly with TPHOL, in Edinburgh. Tom Melham as General Chair and Tiziana Margaria as PC Chair were unanimously applauded by the participants. Then a discussion started on the aims and scope of SIG-CHARME. In addition to those expressed in the position paper, the following ideas were launched: - The SIG should look for a big problem to tackle. What is specially important is the verification of embedded systems design. Application areas such as systems for telecom, or for the automotive industry might provide some very meaningful cases for the use of formal methods. - We are interested in "Hardware-like" systems, but certainly not limited to hardware. Yet we don't want to be deluted in the software world. A precise delimitation of the domain cannot be worded, and we should remain flexible: hardware-software codesign is included in what we would like to formally design and verify. - The SIG should build up the image of the area, and should aim at creating more loyalty among colleagues. - A link with initiatives such as VSIA might be of interest. Organization matters - It was insisted that membership should be open to interested persons even if their past achievements in the domain are short (they might have a long future ahead), easy and flexible. - Most of the SIG members are expected to be from outside IFIP WG10.5. More members from the USA should be sollicited. - Administration should be minimal. A (protected) web site could serve as initial forum to finalize the statement of purpose of the SIG. - The organization of workshops is expensive. Participants discussed a project for obtaining a coordinated funding grant involving US (lead: Gopalakrishnan), Canada (lead: Cerny) and Europe (lead: Melham). Funding could be requesteded under the form of a NSF-ESPRIT proposal. This point was felt crucial. - The next workshop could be titled: "Formal Verification for Systems on a Chip". Prospective speakers should prepare a short statement. The following persons volunteered to devote substantial time to help get the SIG started. Tom Melham accepted to take a leading position to keep that initial group alive. The list of persons is (alphabetical order): Dominique Borrione , Ed Cerny , Luc Claesen , Hans Eveking , Daniel Geist , Ganesh Gopalakrishnan , Nicolas Halbwachs , Warren Hunt , Steve Johnson , Thomas Kropf Tiziana Margaria , Tom Melham , John O'Leary , Laurence Pierre , Mary Sheeran