Innovation and Education

by Gabe Moretti, Editor

The featured article in this issue is a roundtable on innovation in EDA.  Coincidentally, we received a Viewpoint article from Carbon Design Systems' Elizabeth Abraham on education, and I feel the two pieces belong in the same issue.  Educated people tend to be better innovators, and education should have as a goal the development of the skills necessary to innovate.  That means not just teaching people how to memorize facts and data and repeat them in the properly accepted format, something that unfortunately, is becoming more prevalent in our pre-college education system.

Both local, state, and federal government institutions are, and rightly so, concerned about the quality of education received in U.S. schools (especially public schools).  But they have chosen to implement corrective efforts based on the ease to evaluate, as opposed to the capacity to improve quality.  Almost universally, budgets, curricula, and teacher evaluations are based on scores obtained by students taking standardized tests.  The result is that, instead of worrying about developing the basic skills of curiosity, creativity, and correlation among various disciplines, all talents required for innovation, teachers are concentrating on test taking skills, memorization, and repetition.  Students are not encouraged to question what an authority figure (whether it is the teacher or the class material) says, there is no time for constructive dialog or debate in the classroom, and above all, students must avoid second-guessing a test question.

Luckily, there are rebels among us, and creativity has not completely left the EDA industry.  One way DAC encourages creativity is through its various prizes and awards.  You can read about them in the news section together with a short introduction of the three keynote speeches highlighted in this year's program.  We plan to offer you an in-depth introduction to each of the speakers in the coming issues.

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The DACeZine also has a Letters to the Editor section to allow for shorter contributions to the contents and directions of the publication. When necessary, answers to the letters will come from the appropriate member of the team (including our readers), since I do not (yet) hold the total knowledge of the industry within me. I encourage all of you to write, either a viewpoint or a letter, and state your opinions on matters that impact our industry, the contents of this publication, or, for that matter, the publication itself. Send your letters to: dacezine@dac.com.

I hope you enjoy this DACeZine issue and pass it along to your friends and colleagues: I am sure they will want to subscribe as well. They can do so by visiting the www.dac.com web page.

DACeZine sat down to discuss innovation in EDA with Simon Bloch, general manager of Mentor Graphics’ Design Creation and Synthesis Division; John Chilton, senior vice president of marketing at Synopsys; Michel Courtoy, president and CEO of Certess; and Thomas Sandoval, CEO of Calypto. What follows are excerpts of that conversation.

By Ed Sperling

Q: Where is the innovation happening in EDA these days? Is it at pain points, or is it across the board?
Courtoy: Creativity—the generation of a new idea—comes from everywhere. But innovation is also taking this idea and putting into a form that is productive and easy to use. This seems to be coming mostly from the startups. Everyone has bright ideas, but the ability to make an idea useful comes from the startups. In a startup, what drives you is taking an idea and bringing it to market. In a large company, it’s all about growth and EPS (Earnings Per Share).
Sandoval: There are startups that aren’t necessarily that well connected with the customer or the needs of the customer. They have good ideas, but the ideas aren’t that useful. There are a lot of startup companies with cool technology, but innovation without an actual need is useless. As a startup company, what we see as hugely important is the strength of good salespeople and good applications people to help mold an idea into something that is useful. Innovation happens when a company can connect an idea with its uses.
Chilton: I don’t think it’s as simple as small companies innovate and large companies do not. Synopsys would not be involved with fabricating 32nm silicon devices today if we were not innovative. Both small and large companies have extremely ambitious, highly driven people. The difference is the type of problem you’re trying to solve. In small companies, you can solve an interesting niche problem. In large companies, you can solve problems that can change the industry. The large customers know to engage with startups on small, speculative things and engage with the large companies on larger fundamental problems. The requirements for innovation are parceled out by our customers to whom they think can best handle it.
Bloch: If you look at innovation as a whole, the majority of it happens in Silicon Valley.  One distinction is evolutionary versus revolutionary. There are really not a lot of revolutionary innovations, and most of those happen by accident. Most of our discussions are in the evolutionary aspects.

Q: Does innovation occur at the same rate in large companies and startups?
Chilton: What I’ve seen in the last 10 years is that it has switched. The big companies are on a faster schedule. If you go back 10 years ago it was the small companies that were getting products into the market first. Now, organic developments inside big companies must grow faster. We need to get a project started and get it finished in four years, and it needs to be commercially successful in that time.

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Elizabeth Abraham
Vice President of Consulting Services and Marketing
Carbon Design Systems

Education:  A Lifelong Adventure

In Bill Gates’ recent testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology, he highlighted the gathering threat to U.S. preeminence in science and technology innovation.  For the United States to secure its continuing global leadership in technology innovation, he warned, we must as a nation commit to a strategy for excellence in, among other things, education. 

There is a crisis in our public education systems today.

As professionals in the technology arena, most of us have an inkling of the statistics that reveal the seriousness of the state of education in our country.  According to the U.S. Department of Education, we have one of the lowest high school graduation rates in the industrialized world.  Thirty percent of ninth graders, and nearly half of all African American and Hispanic ninth graders, do not graduate on schedule.  Of those students who do graduate and go on to college, a full 25% must take remedial courses on material they should have learned in high school.  Less than 40% of our high school students graduate ready to attend college.

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DAC to Feature Diverse Keynote Lineup

by Gabe Moretti, Editor

DAC has announced the three keynote speakers for the 45th DAC. Justin R. Rattner, Chief Technology Officer, Intel and an Intel Senior Fellow, will deliver the opening keynote Tuesday, June 9, on “EDA for Digital, Programmable, Multi-Radios.”

On Wednesday, June 10, Dr. Sanjay K. Jha, Chief Operating Officer and President, Qualcomm CDMA Technologies Group, will make his keynote presentation on “Challenges on Design Complexities for Advanced Wireless Silicon Systems.”

The final keynote speaker, Jack Little, President and a co-founder of The MathWorks, will present “Idea to Implementation: A Different Perspective on System Design” Thursday, June 11.

 “This year's keynote speakers represent the wide spectrum of our participants, with a major device manufacturer, a wireless system manufacturer and a system design solution provider. They will offer compelling information and useful insights for all of our attendees,” said Limor Fix, general chair of the 45th DAC. “We are delighted to welcome this distinguished group of industry luminaries to DAC and look forward to each of their presentations.”

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