DAC is Next Week!

DAC starts on Sunday. If you are in San Francisco on Sunday then the first event is the normal welcome reception. This is the ultimate networking event in EDA. It is in the Intercontinental Hotel about a block from the convention center and runs from 5.30 to 7pm. This is preceded by Gary Smith’s traditional kickoff from 5pm to 5.30pm. If you miss it on Sunday it is repeated in the Pavilion on the show-floor early on Monday morning. Dan and I will both be there on Sunday night.

It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that Dan Nenni and John Cooley don’t have a great relationship. But I’m totally agnostic on it. Cooley’s DAC guide is out and you should totally print it out and use it to guide yourself around the show-floor. It is here. I’m not going to claim that John’s opinions are accurate on everything, he has his biases of course, but I’m willing to bet he has put more thought into what to see at DAC than you have. You have no time, right? We have guides to various companies on SemiWiki, in much more detail, but as a comprehensive guide to DAC you cannot beat John’s guide. So read the SemiWiki guides which have a ton of detail and use John’s guide for the big picture and to fill in the gaps.

The biggest event of the whole show, better even than the keynotes, is (OK I’m biased) the Tuesday night cocktail party sponsored by SemiWiki and eSilicon where you can get a free copy of “Fabless” the best book ever written (OK, the only book ever written) about the semiconductor industry’s transition from IDM to foundries, the growth of TSMC, EDA’s importance in the ecosystem and more. The book signing and DAC evening is 6-7pm in the Esplanade Foyer. I’ll be there. You should be too (and you don’t have to sign a thousand books).

Talking of keynotes, Cliff Hou of TSMC is giving the keynote on Monday. It is a slightly weird time so don’t miss it just because you are pre-occupied (hilarious, our CMS doesn’t recognize pre-occupied but suggests pee-occupied as an acceptable alternative. I’m not going there, make up your own joke). It is at 3.25pm in Ballroom 102.

DAC has two special additional areas of focus this year. IP and automotive. There are special tracks, special panels and so on. Did you know that 30% of the value of a modern car these days is in electronics. Think about it? What recent development in cars (Tesla, hybrids, engine-control ABS, navigation…) is not really just adding electronics to the metal. Delphi used to tell me that GM spun out the wrong bit, they should have kept the electronics and outsourced the metal-bashing. But they went bankrupt due to inherited pension obligations, so not exactly a convincing case.

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