  Many critical EDA problems suffer from the curse of dimensionality, i.e. the
very fast-scaling computational burden produced by large number of parameters
and/or unknown variables. This phenomenon may be caused by multiple spatial or
temporal factors (e.g. 3-D field solvers discretizations and multi-rate circuit
simulation), nonlinearity of devices and circuits, large number of design or
optimization parameters (e.g. full-chip routing/placement and circuit sizing),
or extensive process variations (e.g. variability/reliability analysis and
design for manufacturability). The computational challenges generated by such
high dimensional problems are generally hard to handle efficiently with
traditional EDA core algorithms that are based on matrix and vector
computation. This paper presents "tensor computation" as an alternative general
framework for the development of efficient EDA algorithms and tools. A tensor
is a high-dimensional generalization of a matrix and a vector, and is a natural
choice for both storing and solving efficiently high-dimensional EDA problems.
This paper gives a basic tutorial on tensors, demonstrates some recent examples
of EDA applications (e.g., nonlinear circuit modeling and high-dimensional
uncertainty quantification), and suggests further open EDA problems where the
use of tensor computation could be of advantage.
