October continues to be a busy month. I’m just back from a whirlwind trip to Munich, Germany, for DVCon Europe where I was the keynote speaker at the Wednesday night dinner. Stay tuned for a full report in my next blog post.

Meanwhile, if you’re going to ARM TechCon this week, please stop by the ESD Alliance Booth (#523) where you can learn about our programs and new initiatives and pick up a copy of our quarterly newsletter. The Expo Hall will be open Wednesday and Thursday from 10:30 a.m. until 6:30 p.m. at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, Calif.

You’ve all heard the rumors: Mentor Graphics is for sale. If it’s true, who could be buying? Let’s indulge in a gedankenexperiment to find out.

First there’s Cadence. Obviously. Mentor and Cadence both sell back-end tools and combining the two would create a powerful market-leading organization. Clearly Cadence is bigger and richer so they’d be doing the buying, but Mentor would be calling the shots. Why? Because last time these two bad hombres went through this mating dance, Mentor put the kibosh on things by orchestrating an outcry to the SEC about anti-trust. Mentor didn’t want to be bought in 2008, but now things might be different, their preferred outcome not so cut-and-dried. So Cadence is Good idea Number One.