Design and Application of Digital Circuit and Systems

Dear Colleagues,

Rapid advances in AI/ML, edge computing, robotics, autonomous systems, 5G/6G, and cloud-to-edge infrastructures are reshaping the landscape of digital hardware. Designers must continually navigate challenging trade-offs among performance, power, area, cost, programmability, reliability, security, and time-to-market—now further complicated by heterogeneous integration (chiplets, 2.5D/3D), advanced technology nodes, and sustainability targets. The main objective of this Special Issue, ‘Design and Application of Digital Circuit and Systems’ is to feature new works, recent developments, reviews, and results that advance the theory and practice of digital circuits and systems—from algorithms and architectures through RTL/GDSII to system-level deployment and on-hardware validation. We especially welcome submissions that provide quantitative comparisons to the state of the art, release artifacts (code/flows/datasets) for reproducibility, or demonstrate end-to-end case studies in real applications.

Relevant topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Logic design, microarchitectures, and domain-specific accelerators (AI/ML, DSP, cryptography, communications).
• FPGA/ASIC methodologies; HLS-to-RTL flows; hardware–software co-design.
• Synthesis, physical design, timing closure, and PPA optimization, as well as low-power and energy-aware design.
• Reconfigurable, approximate, and asynchronous digital computing.
• RISC-V and open-hardware platforms.
• Memory hierarchies and controllers; in-/near-memory computing; emerging NVMs.
• On-chip interconnects and NoCs; chiplets; 2.5D/3D integration.
• High-speed digital interfaces and SERDES; die-to-die links.
• Hardware security, trust, and privacy; side-channel and fault injection resilience.
• Verification and validation, including formal methods, emulation, and FPGA prototyping.
• Design for testability, reliability, and safety-critical systems.
• Machine learning for EDA, automated design space exploration, and open/reproducible toolchains.
• Edge/IoT and cyber–physical systems; real-time embedding, robotics, and AR/VR case studies.
• On-silicon or on-hardware evaluation and benchmarking.
• Applications of specific integrated Circuits.‌

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Yafei Ning
Prof. Dr. Jie Su
Dr. Yanpeng Shi
Guest Editors

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