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#53DAC Trip Reports

Daniel Nenni

Daniel Nenni

Admin
Staff member
If you attended #53DAC please post your experiences here and pictures if you have them. If you would like to see the #53DAC related blogs click EVENTS on the navigation tab in the header on the home page.

This was my 33rd DAC and hopefully I have a few more left in me. Austin is a great venue but I sure did miss the crowds you get from San Francisco and Las Vegas. DAC used to fill both sides of Moscone Center and now it seem like it would fit in my back yard:

View attachment 17511

I'm not sure what the final head count was but it was noticeably smaller than last year for sure. The parties also seemed smaller but they were lots of fun. My beautiful wife and I rocked the Heart of Technology 1920's party at the Speakeasy. We also attended the ClioSoft party at Micheladas Cantina which had great food and music. We skipped the Denali mosh pit this year, did anybody else go? Last year was quite entertaining.

View attachment 17512

The highlight of course was the book signings at the S2C booth and the DAC cocktail reception. Special thanx to S2C for gifting 500 books.

View attachment 17515

The DAC Art Show was a new and fun twist. Thankfully my beautiful wife was with me to help because I'm seriously color challenged. You can see the winners here: DAC Silicon/Technology Art Show | Design Automation Conference

View attachment 17514

The only real negative of the trip was the hotel. It was very nice with a beautiful view. In fact, supposedly there are 1.5M bats living under this bridge that fly out most nights at dusk. Hundreds of people stand on the bridge waiting but it does not always happen. We watched for them 3 out of the 4 nights and saw nothing. You can read about the bridge/bats here: Congress Avenue Bridge

View attachment 17516

The negative part was the noise. This was absolutely the noisiest hotel we have ever stayed in and that is saying a lot! There were ear plugs on the night stand, yes it was that loud. Cars and motorcycles raced up and down the street all night long and drunk people were yelling almost constantly. Seriously people, have some respect, Austin deserves better.

There were quite a few new companies this year and I made many new friends which is always nice. I did catch some of the talks and panels with mixed results. I will write more about them later. All in all a great experience. We did get evacuated due to an electrical short which was a DAC first for me. They herded us like cows out into the heat while sirens blared. It was deja vu ARM TechCon when the same thing happened during Simon Segars keynote.

View attachment 17517

#54DAC is again in Austin next year. I'm not sure how that is going to work out. My wife and I will definitely be there but I would guess there will be even less of a crowd. I sure do miss the Las Vegas days! I remember attending my second DAC in 1985 in Las Vegas. My beautiful bride came with for a second honeymoon and I remember her saying after a somewhat risque DAC event "This is what you do for a living?!?!?! Seriously!?!?!?!"

D.A.N.
 
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I had a great time in large part due to spending a lot of my time at a family reunion and my niece's graduation in northwest Austin. I was at DAC mostly on the first day, less so on Tuesday and Wednesday. I even missed the fire ;). What I saw looked lively and colorful in the exhibit area and of course I was able to reconnect with many people from the old days. Badge didn't extend to papers and tutorial, which was a shame. Afraid I missed parties and nightlife, at least in central Austin. Happy to hear that DAC will be in Austin again next year!
 
I'll second the happy-DAC-is-in-Austin vote. I did hear some griping from the Silicon Valley types about overall booth traffic, but most people working booths said the quality of conversations was high. One vendor was amazed they were having to force promotional items into the hands of people after visiting, compared to the usual overwhelming number of swag-vultures on Free DAC Monday.

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One of the big developing stories at DAC was RISC-V (no, not "RISC-VEE" as the voice of DAC announced it in a keynote promo) and the "open hardware" movement. Here's a good objective writeup mentioning the Krste Asanovic presentation on Tuesday and more details from the open source IP panel I moderated on Wednesday. It was an honor to have those five guys on stage, a minor miracle considering the fire alarm went off and emptied the Austin CC 10 minutes before we were due to start.

Open-source hardware push for more efficient server blades

DAC is at a crossroads. I think there needs to be much more effort to pull in IoT, maker, and open source audiences. I've likened what I see going on to the last major generational change in embedded design, moving from assembler to C. We're approaching a wave of more numerous smaller design starts - challenging economics for EDA firms set up for a declining number of massive mobile and infrastructure starts.

See you all in Austin for DAC again next year! Look me up if you're in the Austin-San Antonio area for business.<iframe id="rufous-sandbox" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="true" style="position: absolute; visibility: hidden; display: none; width: 0px; height: 0px; padding: 0px; border: none;"></iframe><iframe id="rufous-sandbox" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="true" style="position: absolute; visibility: hidden; display: none; width: 0px; height: 0px; padding: 0px; border: none;"></iframe>
 
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One of the smaller guys told me they were having a hard time pulling traffic. I agree it is going to be challenging for EDA companies to drive new opportunities in this environment. The big guys already have their own shows which, for them are much more important. It may be that the little guys have to focus more of their energy on being at those shows (SNUG, CDNLive, U2U) - which they already do - and less on DAC. I know of at least one company that didn't even bother with a booth this year - they just had a suite in a neighboring hotel. Their view - you want to be there, but very little ROI in investing in floorspace and a booth.
 
Bernard Murphy said:
One of the smaller guys told me they were having a hard time pulling traffic. I agree it is going to be challenging for EDA companies to drive new opportunities in this environment. The big guys already have their own shows which, for them are much more important. It may be that the little guys have to focus more of their energy on being at those shows (SNUG, CDNLive, U2U) - which they already do - and less on DAC. I know of at least one company that didn't even bother with a booth this year - they just had a suite in a neighboring hotel. Their view - you want to be there, but very little ROI in investing in floorspace and a booth.
Click to expand...

Cadence did the same thing a while back, instead of a booth they did suites at a hotel across the street. The backlash was enormous and that was the end of that Cadence CEO, the guy from Intel, what was his name? Even Google doesn't list him.
 
The name you are looking for is "Mike Fister" and his non-EDA colleagues he brought from Intel. They wanted to drop DAC and focus their efforts on CDNlive-like shows maybe like Intel Developers Forums. They also cooked up EDA360 and made it a cult word. Does anyone remember that?
 
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