DATE 2010 Preview
The Design Automation and Test in Europe 2010 conference will be held in Dresden Germany from March 8 to 12.

DATE has always been a favourite conference of mine to attend, with its excellent technical programme from its beginnings in the late 1990s, and its focus on system level and systems design (not to say that it does not cover other aspects of EDA, but ESL has been a strong focus from the beginnings).
I am unlikely to be able to attend DATE 2010 in person this year, but was on the programme committee, as a co-chair for the System Specification and Modelling topic, together with my good friend Eugenio Villar of the University of Cantabria, Spain. I also helped organise a couple of panels: 6.8 – The Challenges of Heterogeneous Multi-core Debug, and 7.8 – Who is Closing the Embedded Software Design Gap?, (organised together with Wolfgang Ecker of Infineon, who will moderate it). The panel on heterogeneous multi-core debug features several designers from the Dresden area as well as Stephen Lauterbach of Lauterbach. The panel on embedded software has participants from Germany, France and the U.S.
My colleague Chris Rowen (Founder and CTO of Tensilica, where I work), is due to give a talk on the topic “FABULOUS, FRIGHTENING AND TRUE: STORIES OF MULTICORE SOC DESIGN FOR WIRELESS BASEBAND” in session 7.1 on Wednesday afternoon March 10. He is also participating in panel 2.8, “Are we there yet? Has System Assembly from IP Blocks Become Like Connecting LEGO Blocks?” on Tuesday and moderating panel 10.8, “Embedded Software Testing: What Kind of Problem is This?” on Thursday.
The other thing that would be nice to be at DATE 2010 for would be to hang about the Springer booth which should be selling (and I hope selling out) the new book by Brian Bailey and myself, “ESL Models and their Application: Electronic System Level Design and Verification in Practice“. If you are there and buy it, I hope you find it useful (of course, you can buy it online at the Springer site and at places like Amazon).
But beyond my own concerns, DATE has many interesting things to offer attendees. Other technical sessions that look interesting to me are:
- Keynotes by Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli and Herman Eul
- Session 3.4, “Application Development for Multicores”
- Session 8.3, “System Modelling for Design Space Exploration and Validation”
- Session 9.3, “Language Based Approaches to System Level Design”
- Session 10.4, “Architectures for Next Generation Wireless Communication”
But check out the programme for yourself – there is lots of interest. With tutorials on Monday and workshops on Friday, you could spend a technically rewarding and very busy week in Dresden.
If you manage to get to DATE I hope you can leave a comment about it here. I’ll be interested in hearing how it goes.
Zoe Paul, The Amazons I



Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli