The 2015 DAC Designer and IP Track

What an exciting year for DAC with record submissions in nearly every category. Most impressive is the increase in Designer and IP Track submissions, content that is helping to continue to evolve and improve the show. If you haven’t already registered, why not do so now?

A brief bit of background about the conference: DAC’s roots are as an academic conference, and the ACM/IEEE refereed research content remains the backbone of the conference to this day. However DAC is also a conference for day-to-day designers and in recent years much work has been done to expand this part of the show. This effort is surely one reason the conference has remained so vibrant and had such staying power in an industry that embodies creative destruction unlike any other. Think of the technology conferences (and publications for that matter) that have come and gone through the years. Meanwhile this June thousands will descend on Moscone in this DAC’s 52[SUP]nd[/SUP] year!

As the conference general chair, I can report that DAC in its fifth decade is vibrant across the board, and especially when it comes to Designer and IP track submissions, which are up 27% compared to 2014. This is an amazing success and we have to shout out a thank you to all the volunteers for getting the word out and motivating their industry peers to submit. We’ve received the highest number of submissions since we started the designer track in 2010, with most of the growth coming in IP and embedded. The focus on embedded dates back to the 48th DAC. IBM’s Leon Stok, DAC general chair that year, set a goal that 30% of conference content should be on embedded systems and software. That rule of thumb has applied ever since and I’m happy to say that if embedded was once DAC’s best kept secret, that’s surely no longer the case. Evidence for this includes the fact that Open Systems Media will be running the collocated Embedded TechCon at this year’s DAC, an exciting complimentary program I first announced on my DAC blog.

In DAC’s Designer and IP tracks we have 16 different sessions in areas such as low power IP, subsystem IP and IP management, security and analytics for IoT, planar to FinFET, embedded systems design – models and optimization, to name just a few. We are bringing back the popular session “New Chips on the Block” with an exciting lineup of talks from biotech to sensors to an application of the OpenPOWER initiative.

And I’m very excited about our Monday morning opening session designer keynote: Google [x] director Brian Otis will give an update on the Google smart contact lens project, which might revolutionize treatment of diabetes for the 1 in 19 people on Earth who suffer from the disease. (That’s 9:20 a.m. in the Gateway Ballroom. Mark your calendars now! We’ve made some changes in the DAC schedule so that nothing in the program competes with the keynotes, all of which are sure to be stellar.)
Check out the Designer and IP track information in the conference program in more detail or just take my word for it and register today. The Designer Special rate is just $95, a bargain for some truly amazing content.

And all registrants, including those signed up for the free “I Love DAC” registration, are invited to our Tuesday networking session at 4:30 p.m. Mingle with your peers, check out their posters and make some new friends. This Designer and IP track social will flow seamlessly into the overall DAC networking session from 6:00 -7:00 p.m.

See you in just seven weeks!