Venue boasts larger embedded-design presence

Venue boasts larger embedded-design presence
By Michael Santarini, EE Times
May 30, 2000 (3:04 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20000530S0024

SAN MATEO, Calif. — The Design Automation Conference, to be held June 4-9 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, heads into its 37th year with an increased focus on bringing embedded systems closer to the EDA world.

According to officials of the Design Automation Conference (DAC), this year's event will be bigger than ever, with more than 250 companies exhibiting their wares, increased tutorial and design tracks, and an entire day mainly devoted to embedded-system design.

As in the past, this year's technical program features two keynote speeches. Theo Claasen, chief technical officer at Philips Semiconductors, will speak on "First-Time Right Silicon, but to the Right Specification," on Tuesday morning, June 6.

And on Thursday afternoon, June 8, Hugo De Man, professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), will examine "System Design Challenges in the Post-PC Era."

As in the past few confer ences, the show will be preceded by a series of workshops. The opening day, Sunday June 4, will once again feature the day-long Workshop for Women in Design Automation as well as two new workshops: one on VLSI design education and one on interoperability.

Tool interoperability explored

The Workshop for VLSI Design Educators is billed as allowing teachers, tool vendors and textbook editors to interact and share their thoughts on how to improve the instruction of VLSI design courses. Meanwhile, the Interoperability Workshop's aim is to bring together representatives from the EDA, semiconductor and user communities to discuss ways to improve EDA tool interoperability.

For its part, the women-in-EDA workshop will feature a keynote by Lorraine Segil, chief executive officer of Lared Presentations, who will discuss her rise through the glass ceiling and the challenges she overcame along the way.

Starting at 9 a.m. on Monday, June 5, the various vendors presenting technologies at the sho w will each get 15 minutes to unveil their new wares.

On Tuesday, the show floor will open and the technical program will begin. Following opening remarks from Giovanni De Micheli, the 37th DAC general chairman and a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University, will come presentations of a best paper and scholarship awards.

Five parallel sessions, presented Tuesday through Thursday, will focus on technical innovations stemming from design automation research and development, and on the use of tools in the design of chips and systems. Among the panels are several with snappy titles: "Design closure: hope or hype," "EDA meets .com," "When bad things happen to good chips" and "Emerging companies: inquiring minds want to know." Other sessions will examine systems-on-chip, system-design languages, mixed-signal systems-on-chip and "Case studies: design on the bleeding edge."

Further scrutiny

New to this year's conference is the Speaker Interaction Room, where the presente rs will be available for an additional 20-minute question and answer session following each paper session.

Wednesday, June 7, will be mainly devoted to presentations on embedded-system design. In a panel called "Embedded-systems design in the new millennium," top executives will address the growing importance of embedded systems and their effect on the design automation landscape.

On its final day, Friday, June 9, DAC will wind down with several all-day tutorials. These include sessions on synthesis and layout timing closure, static timing analysis and optimization, system-level design with embedded platforms, signal integrity in deep-submicron design, and wireless and low-power design challenges.