EDA Thoughts » DAC 2008

DAC47 Attendance Down 25%

Daniel Payne — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 05:27:52 +0000

As you can tell by my title I don’t spin the numbers for our industry’s most popular trade show, so take a look at attendance over the past four years to see how the recession is slowing down for DAC :

DAC46 in San Francisco last year had a respectable 7,996 total people (vendors, exhibit attendees, technical conference attendees).

The lower attendance this year just meant that as a blogger I could spend quality time with each EDA exhibitor to understand what was new, and why their product was relevant to IC design.

In the official DAC post you won’t see the 25% decline even mentioned because it is too stark. Conversely, if there was an increase you would certainly see that in bold print.

Long live DAC, so see you all next year in San Diego, California.

IP Presentations from DAC

Daniel Payne — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:36:03 +0000

ChipEstimate.com has archived all of the IP presentations in PDF from DAC called IP Talks. Companies include:

Algotronix
ARM
Cadence
CAST
CebaTech
Common Platform
Denali
Dolphin
Elliptic
eSilicon
Impinj
IPextreme
KiloPass
Mixel
MoSys
PLDA
Rambus
TakeCharge
Sidense
Synopsys
True Circuits
TSMC
Virage Logic
Wipro

64 Brief DAC Videos

Daniel Payne — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 04:54:37 +0000

David Heller taped 64 brief videos at DAC this month, ranging from 48 seconds to well over 4 minutes. His guest speakers all work at EDA companies that exhibited at DAC, from start-up Analog Rails to giant Synopsys and everything else in-between.

I first met David at Viewlogic in the 90’s, and I’ll never forget the day that he showed me what a web browser was and all of the new content being published. He clearly knew the promise of the web and has setup a valuable site called www.EDAcafe.com

When One EDA blog is not enough

Daniel Payne — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:37:57 +0000

Sean Murphy is now famous for organizing bloggers at DAC 2008 in Anaheim. Check out his list of EDA bloggers.

EDAC Entertainment Dud

Daniel Payne — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:38:27 +0000

Sunday evening EDAC did something different by trying to entertain the DAC audience with a game show, well it was novel yet I predict a show that will not be repeated. In years gone by EDAC has provided an overview of our industry that was at least informative.

Last night the EDAC event was pre-canned ads for:Mentor, ARM, Analog Bits, Magma, Synopsys, TSMC and Virage.

Even cameo appearances by Cooley and Gary Smith were not enough to revive this dud.

The networking and food were excellent, so much so that at least half of the audience choose to keep networking and eating in the back of the room.

Daniel’s DAC list of companies to see

Daniel Payne — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 05:23:52 +0000

I’m a SPICE and transistor-level IC guy so will make the rounds on Monday to see:

Nascentric (OmegaSim – FastSPICE)
Berkeley DA (Analog FastSPICE)
Synopsys (HSIM, NanoSim – FastSPICE)
Mentor (AdIT – FastSPICE)
Cadence (UltraSim – FastSPICE)
Xoomsys (parallel SPICE)
Magma (FineSim PRO – FastSPICE)

For IC layout tools:

Ciranova
Micro Magic
Analog Rails
Magma

Hopefully serendipity will lead me to discover some amazing new gems.

You’ll recognize me as the guy from Oregon who is squinting in all of that California sunshine because we haven’t seen much of that in 2008 yet. Check out the DAC list from Gary Smith.

Free Custom IC Layout Tools

Daniel Payne — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:12:47 +0000

Cadence dominates the custom IC layout market and CiraNova gets a lot of attention about automating analog layout, but I’m here to tell you about an interesting company called Micro Magic that is offering a free IC layout viewer called MAX-View.

Their demo is outrageous because they can load, pan, zoom and edit a design with 1 Trillion transistors! No other IC editor I know of will give you that capacity and responsiveness.

Like CiraNova they also support OpenAccess, a Cadence-led standard.

Ask for Mark Mangum at DAC in booth #764.

Attend DAC Free

Daniel Payne — Tue, 20 May 2008 17:22:46 +0000

This special offer is to encourage you to invite friends and colleagues to register with DAC for a Free Exhibit Pass. This promotion includes complementary admission to the Exhibit Floor, Exhibitor Forum, Turing Award and all Keynote Addresses throughout the week. A $65 value.

Forward this to a friend to register here and use the special promo code FriendDAC2008, or bring the code to self registration on-site at DAC in Anaheim!

The exhibition floor features 200+ leading EDA, silicon and IP companies demonstrating the latest products and technologies to meet wireless electronics design challenges.

2007 ACM Turing Award Winners
Monday, June 9
- Edmund M. Clarke
- E. Allen Emerson
- Joseph Sifakis

Don’t miss our three keynote speakers this year, which include:

Tuesday, June 10
Justin R. Rattner, Intel Senior Fellow, Vice President, Director, Corporate Technology Group and Chief Executive Officer, Intel Corp., EDA for Digital, Programmable, Multi-Radios

Wednesday, June 11
Sanjay K. Jha, COO and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, Challenges on Design Complexities for Advanced Wireless Silicon Systems

Thursday, June 12
Jack Little, President, and a Co-founder of The MathWorks, Inc., Idea to Implementation: A Different Perspective on System Design

Attend the new Exhibitor Forum in Booth #2849 for technical discussions on applications that address a variety of design challenges.
Monday, June 9, Exhibitor Forum presentations begin at 9:30am, and run throughout the day.
Tuesday, June 10, three Exhibitor Forum presentations are to be held during the afternoon, beginning at 2:00pm.
Wednesday, June 11, presentations run throughout the day beginning at 9:15am.

Catch 20 exciting pavilion discussions in the DAC Pavilion Booth #364 including several focused on this year’s theme: “Wireless Design” on Wednesday, June 11.

The 45th Design Automation Conference (DAC) takes over the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California June 8-13.

Forward this email to your friends and colleagues, and we look forward to seeing you in Anaheim!