Hyderabad: The 19th international conference on very large scale integration (VLSI) design and the fifth international conference on embedded systems will be held in Hyderabad from 3 January to 7 January 2006.

The five-day conference titled 'Mobile Embedded Systems' is sponsored by VLSI Society of India (VSI), union ministry of information technology, IEEE Circuits and Systems Society and ACM Special Interest Group on Design Automation (SIGDA).

Addressing a press conference, the chief operating officer of Conexant India, Naresh Reddy Malipeddi, said 800 participants from across the world would demonstrate technology innovation in VLSI design and embedded systems during the event.

Embedded systems themselves have transformed so much that today they have become objects of technological attraction and unique from what they did two decades ago. This is because they are not only engineered creatively but they also work in astonishingly different ways.

The event to be held during January 5-7 will also showcase products and achievements of the industry and provides an opportunity for professionals to interact with each other. The event is being held at Hyderabad after 10 years.

Malipeddi said that the design of the chip used in iPod was done at Hyderabad and it was a place where work in VLSI was outsourced. He said now the 'core activity for the future was being done here.

Malipeddi said, "The international conference held in 1997 in Hyderabad set the trend for the industry to look at Hyderabad as the destination. A large number of players later set up shop in Hyderabad. We expect the conference to have similar significance."

He said that there were three VLSI design companies in the state in 1997 and the number now ranged between 15 and 20.

The first two days of the conference will give a glimpse of where the future in VLSI and embedded systems lies. The actual conference will be held over the remaining three days.

A state-of-the-art exhibition aimed at VLSI professionals will also be held wherein several of top VLSI design and embedded systems' companies, including Cadence, Conexant, Texas Instruments, Portalplayer, ATI Technologies, and Freescale will showcase their products and services.

The conference covers the entire spectrum of activities underpinning the semiconductor industry and provides participants a chance to meet and interact with innovators in the VLSI industry.

Andreas Kuehlman of cadence, Henry Potts of Mentor Graphics, Jackson Hu of UMC, Matthew F. Rhodes of Conexant, and representatives from some of the leading design firms such as Texas Instruments and Xilinx have confirmed their participation.

The registration fee collected would be used to sponsor aspiring students in attending the conference Malipeddi said.