How to write and present

Technical Papers

C.P. Ravikumar

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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 1

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

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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 2
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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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 3
Writing a paper is …
A lot like chip design
You need
 Conceptualization
 Floorplanning and layout

 Interconnections

 DRC and ERC

 Testing

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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 4
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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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 5
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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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 6
 Organizing a paper
Title of the paper
Authors, designations, and addresses
Abstract (100 to 150 words)
Keywords
Sections 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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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 7
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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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 8
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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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 9
Literature Survey
Brief description of the existing body of work
Citations 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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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 10
 Sections and Subsections
Organize each section into subsections and (possibly) sub-
subsections
1. Introduction
1.1 Problem Description
1.1.1 Inductance Extraction
1.1.2 Transmission Line Models
1.2 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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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 11
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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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 12
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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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 13
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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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 14
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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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 15
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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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 16
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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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 17
The “Conclusions” Section
State what was achieved in the paper
Were 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 work
Point out directions for further work

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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 18
 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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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 19
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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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 20
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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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 21
Are you ready to start writing?

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C.P. Ravikumar, Jan 2001 22