C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 1

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How to write and present Technical Papers

C.P. Ravikumar

C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 2

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Objective

The hidden motive: To entice you to participate in the Controlnet internal workshop

At the end of this talk, you should be in a position to appreciate what formal writing style is, and how formal paper presentations are made.

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Outline of this presentation

What is a technical paper?

How does one write a technical paper?

How is a technical paper presented?

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Writing a paper is …

A lot like chip design

You need Conceptualization Floorplanning and layout Interconnections DRC and ERC Testing

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What is a technical paper?

A brief and to-the-point document which describes a body of technical work

There are many types of technical papers Original research papers Survey papers Journal papers Conference papers Letters

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Getting ready to write a paper

What type of paper am I writing?What do I wish to state?Have I got all the background work with me?Have I organized the paper?What electronic format will I use? LaTeX, MS Word, …

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Organizing a paper

Title of the paperAuthors, designations, and addressesAbstract (100 to 150 words)KeywordsSections describing the work Introduction (Background) Previous Work (Literature Survey) Proposed Work (Algorithm, Design, Methodology) Analysis (Complexity Analysis, Quantitative Analysis, Statistical

Analysis, …) Implementation and Results Conclusions

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Abstract

Summary of your work

Entices the reader to read on Must bring out the novelty of your work

Must be brief (100 to 150 words)

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Introduction

Introduction to the problem Why is it worth solving? What did others do? Why did they not succeed? Why do I believe I did better?

Contribution of the paper Is there anything new in the paper? How good are your results? Is your survey different from other available surveys?

Introduction to the paper itself

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Literature Survey

Brief description of the existing body of workCitations to published work In [2], Rosetti and Longfellow described the meaning of

life. Wordsworth presented a different view point in [3]

Bring out the specific advantage of your work w.r.t. published work. However, the Rosetti-Longfellow formula [2] fails for

technologies below 0.2 micron. In this paper, we extend their formula to the deep submicron domain.

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Sections and Subsections

Organize each section into subsections and (possibly) sub-subsections

1. Introduction1.1 Problem Description1.1.1 Inductance Extraction1.1.2 Transmission Line Models1.2 Organization of the paper

In Section 2, we summarize the previous work in this area. In Section 3, we present a new algorithm for …

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Main body of work

Organize your work into sections and sub-sections. 3. New Algorithm for Graph Partitioning 3.1 Genetic Algorithm 3.2 Data Structures 3.2 Crossover Operator 3.3 Convergence Criterion

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Analyze your work

This is my work

This is competitor's work

This is the best any one could

ever get

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Types of Analysis

Quantitative Analysis Present numerical results: size of the chip, clock rating,

power dissipation, … Present tables: Run-time of your algorithm for several

benchmark examples Present graphs: Chip Area Vs Clock Frequency Present improvement figures: Our optimization

algorithm resulted in a 20% reduction in chip area for the sp292 benchmark circuit …

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Comparative Analysis

Comparing two different approaches to the same problem Tabulate results for two different heuristics

Comparing the performance for two different parameters Tabulate results for two different technologies/

voltage values/ …

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Graphic Items

They say one picture is equal to …65,536 pixels

Include at least one or two graphic items Figures

Pictures, Photographs, Algorithms, Plots … Tables

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Figures and Tables

Number all the figures and tables

Graphs are also shown as figures

Provide captions for all figures and tables Figure 3. Floorplan of the SONAR Chip

Refer to each figure and table. In Figure 3, we show the floorplan of the SONAR Chip

as obtained using the MASON software [4].

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The “Conclusions” Section

State what was achieved in the paperWere you able to come to some definite conclusions? We presented two algorithms, A1 and A2, for the

floorplanning problem. Our experimental results indicate that A1 outperforms A2 in terms of solution quality, but requires about 100% more time than A2 in most cases.

Be frank about the limitations of your workPoint out directions for further work

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References

[1] A.V. Aho, D. Hopcroft, and J.D. Ullman. “Design and Analysis of Algorithms,” Addison-Wesley, 1974.

[2] C. Rosetti and H.W. Longfellow. “Life and its Meaning,” Proceedings of the 14th International Conference of the Dead Poets, 1999, 334-339.

[3] W. Wordsworth. “Daffodils,” In “Collected Poems of William Wordsworth,” Ed. R. Roselin, Artech House, 1976.

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Writing Style

Use simple sentences, unless you are comfortable writing complex and compound sentences

Avoid repetition

Make use of the grammar and spelling checker, but exercise caution

Will a figure or table be able to say the same thing more effectively?

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Presenting your work

Who is my audience?What is the purpose of my presentation?What should I talk about?How much time do I have?How many slides should I make?How should I handle questions?Rehearsals

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Are you ready to start writing?