The IEEE Portugal Section announces the official establishment of the IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA) – Portugal Chapter, effective 07 January 2026.

This new chapter reinforces Portugal’s engagement in advanced hardware-centric electronic design methodologies, with a particular focus on the automation, modeling, synthesis, verification, and validation of complex electronic and semiconductor systems.

A Council — Not a Single-Society Chapter

Unlike traditional IEEE chapters that are affiliated with a single Society, CEDA is structured as an IEEE Technical Council. This means it is jointly supported by multiple IEEE Societies, enabling cross-disciplinary collaboration across areas such as:

• Solid-State Circuits
• Computer Engineering
• Circuits and Systems
• Electron Devices
• Microwave Theory and Techniques
• Antennas and Propagation
• Systems Engineering

This multi-society structure positions CEDA as a technical convergence point for hardware design, system-level integration, and design automation research.

Technical Scope and Hardware Focus

The IEEE CEDA Portugal Chapter will concentrate on Electronic Design Automation (EDA) technologies that enable the design of:

• Integrated circuits (analog, digital, mixed-signal, RF)
• ASICs and SoCs
• FPGA-based systems
• Hardware accelerators for AI/ML
• Embedded and cyber-physical systems
• Heterogeneous and advanced semiconductor architectures

EDA is fundamental to modern semiconductor development, encompassing design flows from high-level modeling and architectural exploration to physical implementation, verification, and test.

The chapter will promote technical activities including:

• Specialized workshops on design automation methodologies
• Seminars on verification, synthesis, and physical design flows
• Industry-academia collaboration initiatives
• Engagement with semiconductor and hardware startups
• Support for graduate and doctoral research in hardware design

Strategic Relevance for Portugal

As semiconductor technologies become increasingly strategic for technological sovereignty and digital transformation, strengthening national expertise in hardware design and automation tools is essential.

The establishment of the IEEE CEDA Portugal Chapter creates a structured platform to:

• Consolidate Portugal’s hardware design community
• Increase participation in international EDA conferences and standards initiatives
• Foster collaboration between research institutions and industry
• Support the next generation of hardware engineers

Further information about the global activities of IEEE CEDA is available at https://ieee-ceda.org/.

The IEEE Portugal Section invites researchers, industry professionals, and students working in hardware design and electronic system automation to actively participate in the development of this new technical community.