Category Archives: eda industry

Going to DAC? There’s an app for that

Posted on May 30, 2011 by paulmcl

Are you going to DAC in San Diego? Do you have an iPhone? In which case Bill Deegan’s dac48 app is something you should install before you get there. It’s free, which makes a nice change from EDA software pricing. … Continue reading →

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Carl Icahn

Posted on March 30, 2011 by paulmcl

I ran into Wally Rhines at a Mentor press event yesterday. As I was leaving he took time to tell me how great the EDAgraffiti book is. “The best book on the EDA industry.” Actually, I think it is about … Continue reading →

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Magma’s new P&R and re-building the foundations

Posted on January 4, 2011 by paulmcl

One of the important but often unrecognized aspects of engineering is re-building the infrastructure underneath key design tools. Sometimes this gives a new desirable capability but often a lot of the effort is simply to modernize the code base so … Continue reading →

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Carbon

Posted on December 23, 2010 by paulmcl

In the latest piece that Jim Hogan and I put together about re-aggregation of value back at the system companies I talked a little bit about Carbon. I got two things wrong, that I’d like to correct here. The first … Continue reading →

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Evolution of design methodology, part II

Posted on December 22, 2010 by paulmcl

The second half of the article that Jim Hogan and I wrote on re-aggregation of design at the system companies is now up at EEtimes. The second part of the article looks at the implications for the EDA and IP … Continue reading →

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Pat Pistilli: the first cell library, the first printed label, and more

Posted on December 16, 2010 by paulmcl

Pat Pistilli is this years Kaufman Award winner. I was out of the country for the award dinner so I didn’t attend but I talked to Pat earlier today. Pat, who was at Bell Labs, started DAC (then called SHARE, … Continue reading →

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30th Anniversary of Funding of VLSI Technology

Posted on December 12, 2010 by paulmcl

Doug Fairbairn reminds me that today is the 30th anniversary of the funding of VLSI Techology. VLSI was really the first company to embrace the idea that integrated circuits could be designed by people outside the priesthood of the semiconductor … Continue reading →

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Vertical integration back in fashion: re-aggregation again

Posted on December 7, 2010 by paulmcl

I was on a board meeting of Tuscany this morning and Trevor Loy, the board-member representing Flywheel Ventures painted an interesting view of what Wall Streets received wisdom is about what is going to happen in technology in general. The … Continue reading →

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System re-aggregation

Posted on November 24, 2010 by paulmcl

For some time now Jim Hogan and I have been debating whether we are finally on the cusp of one of those design transitions that comes along once every decade or so: the move to gate-level from transistor, the move … Continue reading →

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Making DAC more valuable

Posted on November 12, 2010 by paulmcl

I attended a “DAC strategy meeting” earlier this week, basically a meeting about how to make DAC more successful. The numbers are currently all going in the wrong direction. Any attendee to DAC can’t fail to have noticed that the … Continue reading →

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