DAC #46 is on the way … with guaranteed standing ovation!

Well, the latest Design Automation conference got on its way with the “DAC General Chair’s Reception”. While I was receiving notes from Denali that the contests are very close – shameless plug: you can vote for my Blog and me for another 23 hours and 14 minutes to become the “Next Top EDA Blogger” – Andrew Kahng took the stage and thanked the sponsors who made sure that “DAC Free Monday” was met again.

The group next to me joked that at this year’s opening reception a standing ovation was guaranteed – for lack of seating space that is. The layout was arranged in big round tables but there did not seem to be enough (see the picture in this post). In exchange the crowd did not really get quiet during Wally Rhines’ and Gary Smith’s remarks.

Gary’s presentation dealt with growth prediction and whether EDA growth would be incremental or explosive. Gary brought up a slide with the number of users, in which the number of embedded software programmers makes the number of SoC hardware and board designers look very, very small. However, he also continued that the Embedded Software is drifting away from EDA and the essentially the commercial embedded software design tool market is disintegrating. As proof he used several slides on acquisitions – including Intel / Wind River. The question came up whether the Embedded Software tools– much like FPGA software – may become a delivery of the Semiconductor Houses.

Well, it admittedly is interesting how this all will play out!

When the presentations ended on remarks about twitter and other social media it became clear to me that this year around this for sure seems to have become a “Social Media DAC” as well. It remains to be seen whether it will become completely virtual as other shows I attended earlier this year as attendee and exhibitor. I, for one, do enjoy the personal interaction with fellow colleagues here. But that said, please don’t hesitate to follow my Blog during the next couple of days as I am blogging away about DAC as well as to follow me on Twitter (ID: fschirrmeister). All Tweeds will this year posted at the Synopsys booth as long as they have #SNPS or #46DAC in the content line. Quite fascinating. My fellow Blogger Karen Bartleson also will run Social Media topics in our Conversation Central area at the Synopsys Booth.

On ESL: The latest schedule for the presentations of the System-Level Catalyst partners you can find here … See you at DAC!