Message from the chairs - Welcome to CODES+ISSS 2004!

On behalf of the organizing committee and the program committee, it is our great pleasure to present to you the technical program of The Second IEEE/ACM/IFIP International Conference on Hardware/Software Co-Design and System Synthesis. After a successful merger of the ISSS and CODES last year, we are determined to build on the momentum of the new vibrant community in creating the premier event for system level design. To build a solid reputation, we made sure we selected papers of the highest quality. This year, we received 159 submissions, an 11% increase over last year's 143. On average, each paper received over six reviews, and the ten topic chairs led online discussions for several weeks to scrutinize the reviews received. At DAC 2004, the TPC Co-Chairs, Petru Eles and Axel Janisch, organized a program committee meeting, under the strictest code of conduct on conflict of interest rules, to select papers based exclusively on their merit, as opposed to filling an allocated quota. Controversial papers received additional reviews by qualified TPC members at the meeting. In the end, 39 out of 159 papers, or 24.5%, were accepted. We believe you will also find these papers in the program to represent some of the most important advances in theory and practice in the area of embedded systems synthesis and co-design. In addition to the technical program, we have expanded on our co-located events by adding WASP 2004, the Third Workshop on Application Specific Processors. We are also continuing our proud tradition with EstiMedia, the Second Workshop on Embedded Systems for Real-Time Multimedia, after a tremendous response to its debut with CODES+ISSS last year. We will continue adding even more such synergistic events in the years to come, in an effort to increase attendance from industry and academic participants with more focused applications and interests.