dac-topic-selection
Use when deciding whether an EDA or chip-design project belongs at the ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC) and, if so, in the double-blind archival Research Manuscript track versus the industry-facing Engineering Track — or whether it should route to a sibling EDA venue (ICCAD, DATE, ASP-DAC) or a computer-architecture venue (ISCA/MICRO/HPCA), decided by contribution shape, QoR evidence maturity, and the November calendar.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill dac-topic-selection --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# DAC Topic Selection Decide the venue *and the track* before drafting. DAC — the ACM/IEEE **Design Automation Conference**, "The Chips to Systems Conference" — is the premier forum for **electronic design automation (EDA)** and chip/system design. Its distinguishing structural fact, absent from the academic architecture venues, is that DAC hosts **two peer-reviewed paper tracks with different review models**: the double-blind, archival **Research Manuscript** track and the industry-facing **Engineering Track**. Picking the wrong track wastes a full cycle just as surely as picking the wrong conference. ## The two questions, in order 1. **Is this a DAC contribution at all?** DAC rewards work that advances how chips and systems are *designed, automated, verified, or secured* — a new placement/routing algorithm, a synthesis or verification technique, an ML-for-EDA method, a hardware-security defense, a design methodology with measured QoR impact. A pure computer-architecture result (a new microarchitecture, a cache policy) whose EDA/automation angle is incidental is respected and then routed to ISCA/MICRO/HPCA. 2. **Research Manuscript or Engineering Track?** This is the DAC-specific
- The two questions, in order
- Research Manuscript vs Engineering Track
- Sibling-venue routing (EDA and architecture)
- Contribution shapes DAC Research rewards
- The QoR-impact and model-swap tests
- Cheap reconnaissance before committing
- Decision procedure
What does the dac-topic-selection skill do?
Use when deciding whether an EDA or chip-design project belongs at the ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC) and, if so, in the double-blind archival Research Manuscript track versus the industry-facing Engineering Track — or whether it should route to a sibling EDA venue (ICCAD, DATE, ASP-DAC) or a computer-architecture venue (ISCA/MICRO/HPCA), decided by contribution shape, QoR evidence maturity, and the November calendar.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill dac-topic-selection --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, a repository with 909 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.