EDAC Update: Elections, Kaufman and More

I wrote recently about the EDAC mixer in Mountain View. Due to college basketball there won’t be one in March, the next one will be in April. Details later in the month.

The EDA Consortium (EDAC) is seeking nominations for the Board of Directors for the two-year term beginning May 29, 2014. Voting member companies are entitled to nominate their CEO, president or COO to serve on the consortium’s Board of Directors. Nine of the nominees will be elected to serve a two-year term on the EDA Consortium Board. The deadline for nominations is Monday, March 31st at 5pm Pacific.

DATE is in Dresden in two weeks, from March 24-28th. You are cutting it fine but EDAC members get a discount on exhibit booth space at DATE (and at DAC which is in San Francisco the first week of June).

Meanwhile, here is some news from some of the groups that work on various issues of general interest to EDA companies.

The Emerging Companies Group promotes the interests of companies whose annual revenue is less than $5M. The Emerging Companies Committee is planning another exciting year of events with information especially useful for start-ups. Upcoming events include Marketing Best Practices, and more installments of the popular EDAC – Jim Hogan series, including Investments Fueled by the Upcoming Energy Boom in the spring and Alternative Sources of Funding for Emerging Companies scheduled for the fall. Previous installments of the EDAC – Jim Hogan series are available in the EDAC media library.

The Export and Government Relations Group supports the interests of EDA in matters pertaining to product export. In September 2013, the Export Committee, in cooperation with the Emerging Companies Committee, held an informative seminar on export regulations at the new EDAC offices in San Jose. Many smaller companies do not have the resources to track these complex and ever changing sets of export regulations, but ignorance of the laws is not an excuse. Non-compliance can be costly, with penalties ranging from significant fines to imprisonment. This valuable seminar was recorded, and is available to members on the EDAC web site. A publicly available preview is available; EDAC members can view the full presentation. Members can also visit the Export Compliance Update, which reviews key export information for EDA companies.

The License Management & Anti-Piracy Group provides a forum for members to identify and solve software licensing and piracy problems common to EDA vendors and their customers. The committee met with Flexera in October 2013 to discuss our thoughts on external license reclamation. (External License Reclamation is a tool or procedure that attempts to force an application program to give up its licenses by applying an external action like process suspension or stoppage.) After some discussion, we concluded this is a very risky practice, and in general is not supported by EDA vendors. This document details the issues surrounding external license reclamation, and why the LMA committee does not support the practice.

There is more at EDAC. Interoperability. Market Statistics Service. The Kaufman Award. All at the EDAC website here. EDAC members have full access to all the supporting materials, videos, presentations etc.

More articles by Paul McLellan…