DAC has just announced the program. You probably already know, but just in case you don’t: DAC is late this year, July 26-31st and it is in San Francisco at the Moscone Center (walking distance from where I live, yeah!). The DAC website is at dac.com, as always.
There is some interesting stuff for those planning on going, including 29 panels in addition to the usual technical papers. One panel takes the place of a keynote and brings together Lip-Bu Tan, Wally Rhines and Aart de Geus, the CEOs of the three largest EDA companies. It will be late Monday afternoon. The other keynotes are on changing EDA/semiconductor business models by Fu-Chien Chu of TSMC, bright and early on Tuesday morning; and on parallel, scalable computing by Bill Daley of nVidia and Stanford just before lunch on Wednesday.
There are also panels on whether to stay in EDA, green technology, whether Moore’s law is a victim of the financial meltdown and other panels of general interest. There’s even one panel where you get to vote on which topic they cover, picking between wearable sensors, scavenging power, netbooks, and staying relevant in the current job market.
The exhibit list looks as long as ever, with around 20 new companies exhibiting for the first time, most of whom I admit I’ve never heard of. The exhibits are the same days as usual, 9am to 6pm Monday through Wednesday with a half-day on Thursday from 9am to 1pm.
One big change. There is no longer free access to the exhibits, an exhibit-only badge now costs $50 (or $95 if you procrastinate so much you end up buying it on-site), but it also now gives access to the keynotes and some other stuff. Also, exhibitors (or some of them anyway) will have complimentary passes to allow them to invite people, so if you are an EDA customer you might want to whisper in the ear of your neighborhood salesperson. Of course, exhibitors get in free to man their booths and suites, so you also can volunteer to help out a friendly executive on their booth if you aren’t already condemned to booth-duty. And if you are in EDA but between jobs without financial support, you can attend the exhibits for free (but I’m not sure how the logistics of this work yet).
As always, Denali are hosting a party for the EDA and design community on Tuesday evening. It’s at Ruby Skye from 8 ‘till late. You need to register to get a ticket and you won’t get in without one. They are also having various competitions including best EDA blog. You know who to vote for (once voting opens in June). Hint: it’s one that, for some reason, doesn’t appear on the front page of the DAC website in their little panel listing all the EDA blogs. I wonder what I said? This has now been fixed
People have been predicting the demise of trade-shows for a long time, but there is no doubt that DAC is the one event of the year where you can take the pulse of the industry, get a perspective on the future and, perhaps, discover something unexpected. Not to mention meet up with a lot of people you haven’t seen since…well, DAC last year. If you are serious about EDA then you really need to attend.