Rajeev Madhavan, in an interview with EE Times (below), said as parts of the electronic design automation (EDA) industry become more tightly coupled with back-end manufacturing, such an alliance with Semicon—a trade show for semiconductor equipment vendors—makes sense.

"Given that design and manufacturing and all these things are coming together, it might be wise for something like DAC to combine with Semicon or be next to Semicon West," he said. "To stop erosion, we need to show where we can integrate with other people."

Final attendance numbers for this year's conference and exhibit aren't out yet, but marketing sources say it appears that attendance will be flat with the last DAC in San Diego, in 2004. Some of the largest EDA vendors have been dramatically shrinking their presence on the exhibit floor in recent years and pouring more of their marketing dollars into their own customer events.

"We have to make some tough decisions in making these conferences more prone to getting more users from different places to attend," Madhavan said.

Madhavan was generally upbeat about the industry overall, which grew about 10 percent last year, but he said there will be continued consolidation.

"A lot of startups who are doing technologies in one piece will end up getting more and more assimilated into one of these providers of solutions rather than try to go public," he said. "Categories create companies," he said, pointing to Cadence (place and route), Synopsys (synthesis) and Magma (physical synthesis). "Features get acquired."