Cadence EDA360 Manifesto

EDA360 is said to be a blueprint or high-level vision for the EDA industry and not a Cadence specific document, based on the challenges that customers are experiencing. What EDA36o really is, is a manifesto, a public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives, issued by a specific organization. The question is: EDA360, will it be an industry transformation catalyst or a failed public relations campaign?

Unfortunately the word manifesto will forever be negated by the Unabomber’s (Theodore John Kaczynski) rambling 35,000 word manifesto against modern society “Industrial Society and Its Future”, which brought to conclusion one of the FBI’s most costly investigations. Mr Kaczynski’s brother recognized the writing style and arguments and informed the FBI of Ted’s wilderness whereabouts. It is my hope that John Bruggeman and EDA360 can change the perception of a manifesto and not reinforce it.
To understand a manifesto, first you must research the author. I’m a bit surprised that John Bruggeman has not one but two LinkedIn profiles and neither is even close to being complete, so my research ended there. John Blogs and Twitters but does not do LinkedIn? It is concerning if a Chief Marketing Officer does not really get Social Media. John’s Twitter and Blog started after he joined Cadence so maybe he is still ramping up, I hope he is a quick study. Theodore John Kaczynski doesn’t have a completed LinkedIn profile either but he does have a very detailed Wiki page.

The manifesto itself is 32 pages long and can be found here along with an overview, John Bruggeman intro video, and an EDA360 news aggregator. A Richard Goering EDA360 Q&A is here and the Cadence official EDA360 press release can be found here. The formal Cadence description:
The Cadence EDA360 Vision Paper is a comprehensive call-to-action for the electronics industry to address a disruptive transformation—a shift in focus from design creation to integration. Drawing upon a collaborative ecosystem, EDA360 enables the development of complete hardware/software platforms that are application-ready. While traditional EDA concentrates on silicon design creation, EDA360 responds to the needs of both design creators and integrators. It helps creators close the “productivity gap” through improved approaches to design, verification, and implementation. EDA360 also helps integrators close the “profitability gap” by providing new capabilities for IP creation, selection, and integration, and for system optimization.

The main goal of any manifesto is to elicit discussion and from what I have seen so far there will be plenty of it on EDA360. A Cadence PR person contacted me a couple weeks ago and has scheduled a 30 minute discussion between John Bruggeman and myself for May 10th. Hopefully I can make some sense out of all this and come up with some relevant questions for John by then as to not embarrass myself. Normally I require lunch or some sort of meal to blog, as a qualifier as to how serious they are (I blog for food). On this occasion however, I will give Cadence the benefit of the doubt.