On December 2, the final of the 4^th Integrated Circuit EDA Elite Challenge was held online. Apart from a national second prize, the contestants from the School of Information Science and Technology won a national first prize for their excellent solution to the conundrum designed by Phlexing, a major Chinese EDA enterprise, and were offered an opportunity to compete in the roadshow of “Kylin Cup”, the top title of the Challenge. With such, Southwest Jiaotong University was given the “Outstanding Organization Award”. Di Zhixiong, the adviser of the two teams and an associate professor at the School, succeeded in bearing the palm for four times in a row and thus received multiple honorary titles.

Sponsored by the Chinese Institute of Electronics, the Challenge is regarded as the top-tier and most influential EDA competition in China. The year of 2022 saw 457 teams from 81 universities at home and abroad including Tsinghua and UCLA joining in the grand rivalry, and 80% of the competitors are postgraduate students.

SWJTU has established and managed to maintain its strong presence in this event. Participating for four times, the University has taken home four national first prizes and made two presentations in the roadshow. Even more noteworthy is that the best project in 2020, “A Negotiation-Based Placement Legalization Algorithm”, has been adapted as an academic paper and published in 2022 on IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, the only CCF-A journal of EDA.