Embedded systems are everywhere, or hadn't you noticed? The organizers of the Design Automation Conference (DAC) certainly have. As a result, this year's 38th DAC (June 18-22) will take on a decidedly embedded flavor as the EDA industry's annual shindig rolls into the Las Vegas Convention Center.
DAC continues to grow in size and gain more influence on the EDA industry. Some 17,000 attendees are expected at this year's conference with a record 260 exhibitors of EDA tools, intellectual property (IP), and silicon to keep them busy on the show floor. The technical sessions will feature 160 paper presentations, panel sessions, and tutorials on subjects from integration and verification of IP to FPGAs versus ASICs, to analog design flows. DAC offers something for everyone interested in EDA.
The overall technical program in-cludes 50 sessions that home in on such topics as supply-chain management, verification, hardware description languages, IP integration, logic synthesis, and analog and mixed-signal hardware design. Nine special sessions within the program feature invited presentations by leading academic figures and engineers. Topics for these segments include "Nanometer Futures," in which presenters will explore the cost and quality issues related to consistent production of working nanometer silicon. Another special program of interest is "Closing the Gap Between ASIC and Custom Design Examples." This segment will show examples of how circuits designed in an ASIC (RTL synthesis) methodology are bridging the performance gap with circuits designed in custom methodologies.
Other special sessions will look at topics like design for subwavelength manufacturability, configurable computing, verification, inductance issues in high-speed design, visualization and animation in VLSI design, on-chip communication architectures, and the factors driving EDA innovation today. All of these sessions promise to be forward-looking and engaging explorations of topics that will interest engineers for years to come.
Keynote addresses are always a DAC highlight. On June 19, Henry Samueli, co-chairman and chief technical officer of Broadcom Corp., will deliver this year's opening keynote. Samueli's address, entitled "Designing in the New Millennium: It's Even Harder Than We Thought," will cover the challenges facing the design community in the development of very complex SoCs and why a comprehensive EDA strategy is key to rapid time-to-market.
A second keynote address will be given on June 21 by Willem P. "Wim" Roelandts, president and CEO of Xilinx Inc. In his address, "FPGAs Enter The Mainstream," Roelandts intends to provide attendees a glimpse of some FPGA innovations on the horizon, such as embedded processors, high-level language support, remotely configurable hardware, and fast serial I/Os.
In addition to the full slate of technical sessions, there will be six full-day tutorials to choose from on June 22. Topics include "Design-for-Test Techniques for SoC Design," "CAD Tools for Mixed-Signal and RF ICs," and "Low-Power Tools and Methodologies for the ASIC Industry." There will be an interactive tutorial on the fundamentals of signal integrity for high-speed/high-density design. Other tutorials will cover architectures and CAD tools for field-programmable devices and design-to-manufacturing interfaces for ultra-deep-submicron designs.
Plus, two workshops are offered. One, the Workshop for Women in Design Automation, titled "Smart Risk Taking = Innovation," will run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on June 17. It will feature prominent EDA industry leaders and a discussion on strategies for establishing workplace environments that encourage and reward smart risk-taking to improve product development and promote success. Lynn LeBlanc, senior vice president of customer advocacy at Cadence Design Systems, will deliver a keynote address. Also during this event, the second annual Marie Pistilli Women in EDA Achievement Award will be presented to an individual recognized for helping to advance women in the EDA field.
The Workshop for Women, a returning event at DAC, is an example of how the conference strives to be inclusive and to foster an atmosphere of growth within the EDA community. This year's Interoperability Workshop, also returning from previous years, will run from noon to 5 p.m. on June 17. The workshop shows the EDA community reaching out to the silicon world as leading engineers from top design companies discuss how the EDA industry can keep pace with the rapid gains in semiconductor technology through the development of a standard application programming interface for sharing design information.
Over the years, DAC's organizers have made efforts to recognize industry trends and expand the conference and exhibits by giving groups of exhibitors a home within the show. For example, in past years, DAC featured its Silicon Village, a self-contained area on the show floor for IC and IP providers. This tactic proved successful enough that this year's show won't have a Silicon Village. Assimilated into the whole of DAC proper, the IC and IP vendors will be dispersed throughout the show floor.
DAC's organizers now have turned their sights not to a product-specific area but to a broader target, the embedded-systems world, in a new effort to enlarge the conference and establish a beachhead. According DAC general chair Jan Rabaey, of U.C. Berkeley, embedded systems are the next frontier for DAC. "System-on-a-chip (SoC) design is rapidly becoming a dominant area of the design automation industry," Rabaey said. "Thus, the 38th DAC is dedicating a significant share of its program to this area while still maintaining a wide and diverse technical offering in all aspects of the design industry."
Reprints
