With the advent of September, the fall conference season begins. Here are some upcoming meetings you may want to attend.
* DesignCon China – September 2-5 – Shenzhen
Last year close to 13,000 attended ICC-China. Expect even more to attend this year.
* Mentor Graphics Forum – September 3 & 5 – Shanghai & Beijing
Keynote will be given by Mentor CEO Dr. Wally Rhines, followed by President of ARM Greater China Allen Wu talking about the next 10 billion chips to be manufactured in China.
* IDF14: Intel Developers Forum – September 9-11 – San Francisco
Intel CEO Brain Krzanich will give opening keynote, followed by lots of talk about the IoT.
* PCB West 2014 – September 9-11 – Santa Clara
The most important conference of the year for board designers.
* Mentor U2U Automotive – September 10 – Dearborn
The debut of a new Mentor User2User event focusing on one of Mentor’s favorite core competencies.
Brian Bailey’s recent article on “Fixing Functional Coverage” in Semiconductor Engineering (http://semiengineering.com/fixing-functional-coverage/) polled experts from different companies about the challenges of catching all the bugs, utilizing assertions and expanding coverage to the entire system. This blog elaborates on the four points we made in Brian’s article about how formal can help with functional coverage.
The EDA editorial brain trust today is the topic of our continuing conversation with Richard Goering and Brian Fuller.
Brian Fuller
Richard Goering
ED: What is the EDA editorial brain trust these days?
RICHARD: Not sure how you’re defining “brain trust,” but if there is one, it’s with the vendors and the independent on-line publications.
ED: Who makes up the EDA editorial brain trust?
RICHARD: If you add it all up, there are still a number of editors with deep EDA and semiconductor experience – they’re just no longer with print publications.
Additionally, there are now a number of writers and bloggers who didn’t start as journalists but who turned in that direction during the transition away from print.
Thirty two hours ago, the earth let loose here in Northern California delivering up a 6.0 earthquake 5 miles southwest of Napa in the heart of the wine country. It was the biggest earthquake we’ve experienced in the region since the 1989 Loma Prieta quake, which was a 6.9 on the Richter scale.
The thing about earthquakes is that they come on you suddenly, which is scarier than hell. Nonetheless, at a Sunday afternoon party yesterday in Silicon Valley, where the earthquake was felt even though the epicenter was 80 miles away, a Bay Area native said, “We may not know an earthquake’s coming, but I’d still rather live here than in places where they’ve got tornadoes. Now those are really scary!”
Ironically, on local radio this morning a geologist based in the Midwest was being interviewed about yesterday’s South Napa quake and concluded by saying, “You know, we may have tornadoes in our area, and they are pretty darn scary, but I’d far rather live here than where you guys are. At least we have warning when a tornado’s bearing down on us!”
But is that implication true? Is there no such thing as a warning prior to an earthquake? Well, for those of us who live in Earthquake Country, we are beginning to think [hope] differently.