The International Conference on VLSI Design was started in 1985, as a small workshop at IIT Madras, under the visionary guidance of Dr. Vishwani Agrawal of Auburn University, and Prof. H.N. Mahabala of IIT Madras. From this modest beginning, it has grown into a international conference on VLSI design, which draws around 700 attendees from all over the world every year. The IEEE Computer Society Press, USA, prints the proceedings. The conference is dedicated to all aspects of integrated circuit design, technology, and related computer-aided design (CAD).
Nowadays, it is held jointly with the International Conference on Embedded Systems.
Exhibitors in the conference include leading companies like: ATI, Cadence, Xilinx, Intel, Mentor Graphics, PortalPlayer, and others.