The Design Automation Conference people have put together what looks like an outstanding technical program for this year's DAC, set for June 10-14. But there's an undercurrent of concern about how many people will show up in New Orleans, an out-of the-way location from a high-tech point of view, especially given the state of the economy.
The program should interest just about anyone who is involved in chip design. An intriguing feature this year is a lot of emphasis on embedded-software development, including a full-day tutorial, a panel, a keynote and various paper sessions.
DAC kicks off on Monday, June 10, with an interoperability workshop, an "introduction to EDA" workshop and a "women in design automation" workshop. The Tuesday-morning keynote speaker is Hajime Sasaki, chairman of the board of NEC Corp.
On Tuesday through Thursday, various panel discussions will examine Wall Street's evaluation of EDA, analog intellectual property, tool bottlenecks, nanometer design, ASIC handoff, unified tools for embedded systems, formal verification and "the next EDA driver." A Thursday keynote features Jerry Fiddler, chairman and founder of Wind River Systems.
On the exhibit floor, more than 200 vendors will show off their latest products, but much of the real action will be in the demo suites. And then, of course, there will be parties, dinners and social events, though spending may be somewhat curtailed this year.
But the Big Easy is a tough location to reach from most high-tech centers. Who will make the trek? The DAC people are expecting 15,000 attendees. They got nearly that many last year, but according to designer John Cooley's postmortem DAC review, only about 2,500 of those were actual EDA buyers. The rest were exhibitors, academics, press, students, guests and others.
Still, if you're involved in the selection of chip design tools, DAC makes sense. You may be making decisions about tools priced at $50,000 or even $500,000. Can you afford not to spend $2,000 to travel to New Orleans in order to see all the alternatives?
We'll report on the panels and keynotes, but it's not the same as being there. We'll report significant DAC product announcements, but we can't put you physically in a booth or demo suite where you can get your hands on the product.
Our EEdesign Web site will carry all the latest news from DAC. Meanwhile, you can get program information and register at www.dac.com.
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