My DAC Shopping List

DAC is next week! Are you ready? Organized? Got those appointments line up?

Hopefully you're better prepared than I and started your research before yesterday. What sparked my action (finally) was a colleague asking me "what to see" at DAC.

Caveats

• I'm not including the major EDA vendors, particularly Synopsys. It's not because they're not interesting, but because they do a good job of keeping me informed, and I have other avenues for updates.
• My interest is in design implementation, so my picks are focused in that area. I don't work much with Verification tools. It's not to say there isn't equal or more innovation in that realm.
• The list is compiled from what's in my head and what interested me from my email Inbox. I hope to do more research and add more links over the coming days.

My List

Oasys

The most interesting synthesis competitor. Good buzz for the past several years, and backing from major customers like Intel and Xilinx.

Calypto

They're doing interesting things combining ESL design and verification, and have innovative products for power optimization.

RealIntent

Up and coming RTL Analysis company. Agile and innovative.

Forte

I'm forever trying to figure out where ESL design and synthesis fits. They've been working on this for years.

ChipEstimate

Silicon IP is important and will only grow more so as chip capacity grows exponentially. ChipEstimate helps provide the catalog and planning tools for assembling an SoC.

Atrenta

I haven't looked closely at what they're planning for DAC, but have caught a few headlines that refer to some mysterious big announcement. Will have to check it out.

Other Voices

• Gary Smith's What to See at DAC 2012 list.
• John Cooley's My Cheesy Must See List for DAC 2012.
• EE Times New companies at DAC for the first time in 2012. I can't figure out the URL, so leave it as an exercise for you to find. It's compiled by Brian Bailey.

Ridiculous Automation

Saw an article in the paper about this UC Berkeley EECS undergrad's "Berkeley Ridiculously Automated Dorm" (BRAD).

What a cool renovation of an otherwise very utilitarian cramped dorm room!
The article mentioned that he was being questioned by campus facilities.
Let's hope Cal has the good sense to encourage such exceptional creativity and engineering.
Go Bears!

Qualcomm Co-Founder on Life & Keys to Success

Nice profile of one of Qualcomm's founders. It's remarkable what humble aspirations the company started with, and where they are today. I believe their first major success was a radio network for trucking fleets!

Graphene, Your Next Switch?

When silicon transistors finally run out of gas, graphene-based logic is one of the candidates to replace it. Graphene: The Ultimate Switch - IEEE Spectrum is a very readable technical description of how graphene behaves and how it might be used in computing.

The Evolution of Conference Schwag

I noticed a lonely unused USB drive in my desk today, and it got me thinking about the hoops that we engineers will jump through to get a conference giveaway. It's an arms race!

In the beginning, there was the t-shirt ...

I just took a box full of bags and backpacks to the donation station ...

USB drives were once precious ...

An iPod is still a pretty cool gift ...

But today's holy grail is the iPad.

Note, none of the pictures are of my schwag. I grabbed photos available under Creative Commons license.

Synopsys/ Magma - Gary Smith's take

Gary Smith gives his informed perspective on Synopsys/ Magma - Great Acquisition, Difficult Merger :: Gary Smith EDA. I like that he names names with respect to which Synopsys products aren't cutting it. On paper, it seemed like a great deal of overlap between the two companies. But Gary argues that Synopsys wasn't competitive in several of these areas, and the Magma tools will give them a stronger line-up.

This point is hard to argue with:

The static timing analyzer will be a big issue with the customer base. With their recent acquisition of Extreme DA, and now Magma, Synopsys has regained their Franchise position in the important Static Timing market. This is not a good thing for the design engineer. Only competition drives tool improvements.

But how's this for bravado?

Magma brags that they can achieve better results with a five man team than Synopsys can with a fifty man team.

That's the sort of claim I might believe from an EDA startup; could a public company (no longer a spring chicken) be so agile, or is this coming from the supreme confidence of their CEO?

The Engadget Interview: ARM co-founder John Biggs

Happy New Year and welcome to 2012! The Engadget Interview: ARM co-founder John Biggs -- Engadget covers the interesting history, philosophy, and future of ARM Holdings. As you will learn from the article, it's a company that might never have been started were it not for Intel.