Mentor a Siemens Business @#54thDAC

This year the Mentor booth will be quite interesting now that they are part of Siemens. I expect zero changes to their DAC presence but we shall see. It will certainly be good to see Wally again. More importantly, I will be afforded the opportunity to talk personally with both Wally Rhines, CEO of Mentor ANDChuck Grindstaff executive chair, Siemens PLM Software, about the recent acquisitionand what happens moving forward. Inquiring minds want to know……


If you look at the Mentor DAC landing page you will see IoT front and center with a panel on Overcoming the Challenges of Creating Custom SoCs for IoT:

The hardware industry finds itself in a new wave of innovation driven by custom SoC development for mixed-signal IoT devices. These devices span an incredibly diverse set of markets, from medical to white goods, and everything in between. With the demand for IoT connectivity and secure data management, what are the best options for today’s systems designers? This panel will explore various options and viable solutions to help designers innovate and to provide unprecedented services to the personal, industrial, and societal levels.

Looking at the SemiWiki analytics I still see IoT as driving not only the most total traffic but also the most diverse collection of domains and crossing the most SemiWiki catagories. In fact, as of today, we have published close to 400 IoT related articles that have been viewed more than 1,000,000 times.

The next highlighted panel is The Explosion of Emulation Use Models in Diverse segments:

Hardware emulation is the star in today’s verification flow. Complexity and the rising cost of doing verification forces project groups to become more innovative about SoC debug and the validation of HW/SW system integration. Expanding emulation use models makes emulation an easy choice. It’s flexible, versatile and scalable. Data center access makes it a cost effective approach for global project groups. Stop by the Mentor, a Siemens Business, DAC booth (#947) to hear a panel of experts describe how to use emulation to build an effective verification and validation platform.

Emulation is certainly a trending topic in semiconductor and system design, in fact, Bernard Murphy and I are finishing up a book on emulation to be published later this year so stay tuned to SemiWiki.com.

The other highlighted panel is on the Impact of ISO 26262 on the fabless Ecosystem:

As fabless companies design products for the rapidly-expanding automotive semiconductor market, whether they are power window controllers or drive-by-wire systems, they have to meet the exacting requirements of the ISO 26262 standard for functional safety. Those requirements affect not only the end product itself, but the software that it runs and the software used to create, validate, and test it. As a result, ISO 26262 has far-reaching impact on the fabless ecosystem, including EDA tools, software, and IP. Come listen to leaders in the industry who have pioneered the way forward for ISO 26262 in the fabless ecosystem as they discuss the challenges that they have faced, what they have done, and what they think still needs to be done in the industry.

Personally, I’m a big fan of interactive panels and I have asked the SemiWiki bloggers to attend as many as possible to share this content with our readers who could not attend.

Mentor will also give us access to some of the best researchers and partners in their booth for you to meet and exchange ideas with (Experts at the Mentor Graphics Booth). There are literally dozens to choose from but you need to sign up for them. The foundries are well represented here as well as some of the top semiconductor companies.

Mentor is also hosting several Networking and Lunches which I find huge value in. Not only does it include FREE FOOD and FREE DRINK (I blog for food and drink), you can actually learn stuff and meet other semiconductor professionals to further your professional goals.

And of course there are Partner Activities because where would we be without partners to collaborate with? We would still be using rotary phones no doubt. There are 18 partners listed including the Foundries, Universities, Customers, EDA and IP companies.

I hope to see you there, absolutely!