Stephen Levitan on DAC 2007
May 22, 2007
Earlier this week I received an email from Nanette Collins, the Publicity Chair for DAC this year. She asked if I would mind sharing a note from Steven Levitan, General Chair of this year's DAC about the verification-focused content of the conference. Steven is from ECE department at the University of Pittsburgh where, interestingly enough, my dad got his undergraduate degree. Also interesting is the fact that Kaushik Roy from Purdue University, my alma mater, is the Design Community chair, but I digress… Here's what Steven had to say:
DAC's Program Tackles Toughest Verification Problems
Steven P. Levitan
General Chair
44th Design Automation Conference
Verification is a hardware design problem that continues to be a challenge, which is why so many of the sessions at this year's Design Automation Conference (DAC) will be devoted to this important topic.
This year's program covers a broad range of verification topics. About 25 papers, panels, lunchtime discussions and a tutorial will address verification and will attempt to offer attendees the latest information and breakthroughs from leading experts. These include a Friday tutorial on "Formal Assertion Based Verification in an Industrial Setting," a special session on "Functional Verification of ESL Models" and a pavilion panel on "Deploying Formal: When and Where?"
Of course, with close to 250 exhibitors on DAC's show floor, there will be an abundance of companies with verification solutions designed to meet the most difficult challenges.
With less than two weeks away, it's time to register, if you haven't already done so because this year's conference offers a bit of everything for anyone doing electronics design today and not just devoted to verification. In addition to verification, popular topics include the areas of system level design and electronic system level (ESL), along with power analysis and low-power design, and design for manufacturability (DFM).
The conference includes three keynote speakers who will look at various fields of design and verification. For example, Oh-Hyun Kwon, Ph.D., president of the System LSI Division of Samsung Semiconductor Business, will offer, "A Perspective of the Future Semiconductor Industry: Challenges and Solutions," during Tuesday's opening session.
Lawrence D. Burns, Ph.D., vice president of R&D and Strategic Planning for General Motors Corp., will discuss "Designing a New Automotive DNA" Monday to highlight our Automotive theme. The Automotive theme continues throughout the week, but don't miss the DAC Pavilion to see GM's Sequel hydrogen prototype car and Silicon Valley native the Wrightspeed X1, that uses processors, flash memory and software to get from 0-60 in under three seconds.
And, Thursday's keynote by Dr. Jan M. Rabaey, the Donald O. Pederson Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley, will be "Design without Borders –– A Tribute to the Legacy of A. Richard Newton."
A day-long seminar for management teams worldwide will be held Tuesday and features Geoffrey Moore, author of "Crossing the Chasm," and an expert on innovation management. He will be joined by Raul Camposano and Rohit Sharma who will present their perspectives on innovation.
Please join us in San Diego June 4-8! More details about DAC are available at: http://www.dac.com.
It looks like Steve is reaching out to bloggers this year in order to promote DAC. Check out what he had to say over at GateRocket and Chips and B$.
I haven't seen any other bloggers at either DVCon or DATE except for the traditional press folks from EETimes, EDN, etc. Bloggers can afford to focus in significant technical detail (or not) on things that are interesting to them, whereas the trade press has to focus on topics that have a much wider appeal. It would be great to see organizers support blogging for all of the major conferences. How? Publicize conference bloggers and provide easy access to reliable high speed internet (great for uploading conference photos) would be a good start. Internet access at DATE was horrible. I didn't notice so much at DVCon because I was using my WAN card the entire time, but the connection was rather slow. A final way to promote blogging would be to hold a "birds of a feather" session for current and prospective bloggers. It's probably too late to do that this year, but maybe folks would find it interesting in the future.