Bosses welcome at DAC

Gabe Moretti, editor

As design complexity grows and financial considerations have increased in importance, clear and frequent communication between the technical and managerial disciplines has become essential. DAC has recognized that dedicating part of the conference to management issues was important a few years ago and in 2003, with the sponsorship of the Fabless Semiconductor Association, held its first Management Day. The event was a success and the following year DAC offered a Business Day that tested a slightly modified format from the previous year. The success of the event convinced the DAC to institutionalize the event as Management Day in 2005, as Yervant Zorian notes in his interview with Peggy Aycinena. In addition to the special event, managers will find many other interesting opportunities to address business issues during this year's DAC, including the three keynote addresses planned for Monday (Joe Costello), Tuesday (Hans Stork), and Thursday (Alessandro Cremonesi) and panels both within the Technical Program and in the Pavilion on the Exhibit floor.

Gabe Moretti, Editor

Optimizing for Success

Some of this analog, mixed-signal, RF stuff is very hard to do.
by Peggy Aycinena

Yervant Zorian likes nothing better than a good optimization problem, so he's the perfect guy to have assembled the program for Management Day at DAC , which will take place on Tuesday, July 25th. The Design Automation Conference inaugurated Management Day last year in Anaheim, and it was such a success they decided to do it again this year in San Francisco. It was Zorian who organized the program for the 2005 event; not surprisingly the DAC Committee invited him to head up the effort in 2006, as well.

Zorian travels a lot internationally in his capacity as vice president and chief scientist at Virage Logic , so I was lucky to catch him by phone between trips this week. Our conversation was informative and efficient - dare I say, optimized - as he explained how he crafted the 2006 program based on what he learned in 2005.

Yervant said, "Assembling the program for Management Day was an interesting challenge. Last year was the first time for the event, and it proved to be quite popular. This year, we are being more specific in the topics for the day, based on suggestions from the managers who attended the event last year. We believe we will attract even more attendees - technical managers, specifically - as we are focusing on case studies of particular interest to this audience. Management Day is designed to be an opportunity for manager-to-manager communication, where the difficulties of technical decision making can be discussed and analyzed."

"DAC has always had, at its core," Yervant noted, "lots of excellent technical sessions where people can hear from the suppliers - EDA, IP, or services companies. Conference attendees can also learn what's going on, in that sector, throughout the Exhibition Hall floor. But Management Day at DAC is designed to be something different, which is why we have made a point not to invite suppliers to be the principle speakers. It is our intention to bring the point of view of the managers who are actually using the products and services to the stage. We want the audience to hear from those who are overseeing the product development process within the fabless and semiconductor companies themselves."

"The people who manage the design of complex chips need to make a lot of tradeoffs," Yervant said. "For them, it is not just about getting products into production, it's about getting products into volume production. There are multiple and complex management problems, as well as technical problems, to solve to reach this goal. These issues are all about optimizing around multiple factors," he added, "whether it be low power, design tools, process nodes, IP, libraries, or the economics of product development and manufacturing. All of these factors must be taken into account by the managers to succeed in their role."

Yervant said that over the course of the day, the audience will hear from a variety of managers about how they optimize their technical and business decisions simultaneously. "These people are constantly challenged with optimizing a complex globalization problem, and the audience will learn a lot from hearing their stories. These issues are very exciting to me, and I know they will be exciting to the attendees at DAC, as well."

Clearly, Zorian has good reason to believe that's the case, because last year there were 200 attendees for Management Day and the event was completely sold out. Yervant chuckled when he told me" There was actually limited space in the session hall in Anaheim, and long queues at the door of people waiting to come in. But because we were sold out, a person could not come in until someone else came out."

"This year," he said, "we expect the same thing to happen, so although we have a larger room in San Francisco than we had last year, people must still register in advance. The cost of registration is $75, which includes lunch and a cocktail reception at the end of the day. Any DAC attendee may register to attend Management Day, but unlike last year, exhibitors are also invited to pay the registration fee and attend."

Whether general conference attendee or exhibitor, Yervant said, everyone who comes will learn something from the speakers on this year's roster for Management Day. He said, "There will be a manager from Freescale discussing the challenges of managing designs for low power. There will be another manager from Qualcomm talking about managing designs targeted at the 65-nanometer node. There will be multiple speakers addressing the management issues involved in designing for the consumer electronics markets, including cell phones. All of these speakers will have a lot to offer our audience."

I asked Zorian if speakers ever inadvertently divulge proprietary information about their corporate decision-making processes during the sessions. Yervant said, "In general, the speakers know what they can discuss in a public forum, and what they can not. It's true that these things - the techniques for optimizing technical and business metrics - can sometimes provide a competitive edge for a company. But more often, the competitive edge comes from the IP these managers are putting into place in their products, not from the management techniques they bring to the effort."

Finally, asked what he believes will be the most important aspect to the day's events, Yervant brought our optimized conversation to a close: "These sessions are designed to be more than simply a group of people lecturing to an audience - they are designed for information sharing. There will be opportunities for the audience to interact with the speakers through Q&A sessions after the panels, plus the hour-long reception at the end of the day. It will not be a one-way conversation, whatsoever. It will be a two-way conversation, all day long."

That's good news for those people who carve out time on July 25th at DAC to attend the various sessions and reception included in the Management Day track. It you want to be part of the two-way conversation taking place that day, you should register to be one of those people now.

Peggy Aycinena is editor of EDA Confidential, www.aycinena.com, and a contributing editor at EDA Weekly, www.edatoolscafe.com.

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A note from the DAC Committee:

Management Day on Tuesday, July 25th, will begin with a general session keynote from Hans Stork of Texas Instruments, "Structuring Process and Design for Future Mobile Communication Devices." That will be followed by a morning panel moderated by Don Clark from The Wall Street Journal , "How Will the Fabless Model Survive?" and the 11th Annual EDA Business Forum luncheon. The afternoon will include two presentation sessions and will conclude with an evening cocktail reception. The first afternoon presentation session, "Decision-Making for Complex SoCs in Consumer Electronics Products," will be moderated by Ron Wilson from EDN . The second session, "Tradeoffs and Choices for Emerging SoCs in High-End Applications," will be moderated by Dave Bursky from EE Times . To register for the Management Day track, please visit the DAC website: www.dac.com .

Apache's market leading "power and noise integrity" solutions deliver dynamic power analysis, low power and leakage management, and SoC noise control for ultra-deep-submicron designs at 65nm and below. Apache's low power solution includes full-chip ramp-up simulation, MTCMOS switch optimization, and impact on timing analysis of mixed-mode operations. For more information, visit www.apache-da.com.

Morgan Kaufmann, Newnes and Academic Press (imprints of Elsevier) publish books for the DAC audience including Networks on Chips, by De Micheli and Benini, Customizable Embedded Processors, edited by Ienne and Leupers, Designing SOCs with Configured Cores, by Leibson, and VLSI Test Principles and Architectures, edited by L.T. Wang, Cheng-WenWu, and Xiaoqing Wen. Visit us at DAC booth 814!

Where do your customers get their information? Do they read more online or print? What makes the best positive impression on customers for EDA and IP products? Is it more effective to target engineers or engineering management? Join representatives from the some of largest EDA customer companies to discuss what they read and what media they believe most influences their purchase and investment decisions.

Pyxis Technology is developing DFM routing technology to address manufacturability and yield for sub-100nm technologies. To bridge the gap between design and manufacturing, Pyxis is working with an ecosystem of DFM partners to ensure successful IC manufacturing. To learn more, drop by Pyxis' booth 2323. Sign up for a technology demonstration at www.pyxistech.com

During DAC2006, SynCira Corporation (booth #2220) will preview the industries first high-capacity, electrical performance driven hierarchical analog layout synthesis tool. With ease-of-use, fast turnaround, and true concurrent analog design and layout generation, the analog circuit designers can now generate analog layouts optimized with 100% constraint satisfaction. Placement, routing, parasitic extraction, back annotation and GDS-generation are integrated. Please visit our website www.syncira.com for more information.