June 18, 2007
DAC 2007 – Perceptions of Primacy in Pleasantville
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Following the hour with GM, I ran to an hour with IP. The 3 o’clock Pavilion Panel on the DAC Exhibition Hall was assembled to answer the question: “Just Who is Providing the IP?” Happily, Star IP provider ARM was on the panel along with one of its Star IP customers, STMicroelectronics. ARM’s Mike Muller and ST’s Paul Bromley launched into what turned out to be an authentically unscripted conversation about IP, who provides it, and when and where and why.
what I believe to have been the high points of this hour-long give-and-take.
to third-party vendors for IP that will be supported by an external provider because it’s a quicker end to a means than trying to work internally to find inaccessible IP, which even when located may not be adequately documented.
other disagreements, ARM, ST, and D&R are all in accordance that standards are the path to Nirvana when it comes to IP.
Once this conversation got rolling, we could have continued for another hour or two, but between 4 PM and 7 PM on DAC Monday, the options for the overly-caffeinated were too complex to stay put for that long.
standard.
was busy greeting the many academics who were arriving for that early evening event when I stopped in. Again, I was only there briefly, but the next day Shrenik told me that the talk given during the evening by U.C. Berkeley’s Jan Rabaey was outstanding.
Okay – time check here. UPF, SPIRIT, CEDA, University Reception all co-located and concurrent, but did you know Si2 was also having a meeting at the same time, also on the 2nd floor of the Convention Center? Gosh – with all of these people, meetings, and topics, who was it that was suggesting that DAC and/or EDA is dull or dying? Hmm. Guess they weren’t in San Diego between 4 and 7 and Monday, June 4th.
And Monday was not over yet. For those lucky enough to be on the guest list, Mentor Graphics was hosting their annual Press & Analyst dinner at the Coronado Hotel across the water on Coronado Island. By car or taxi, this is about a 15-minute ride from the Convention Center and for those who suspected the dinner would be delish, they were not disappointed. Mentor spiced up the cocktail hour with presentations from customers UMC, MIPS and TI, and then served a sumptuous dinner, with equally sumptuous wine, rounded out with a performance from a black-light dance team. Mentor’s festivities wrapped up at 10, leaving time (unbelievably) for one more event before the evening was through.
Virage Logic hosted a late-evening Brandy & Cigar event back in downtown San Diego at the Salomar Hotel. Even though most of us were into an 18-hour day at that point, this was a great gathering of folks. Everybody there was either too tired to be tense, or too relaxed to be tired, and just about everybody who was anybody from the EDA vendor community was there. Of course the topic of the hour was the hottest topic of the day.
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Perceptions of Primacy in Pleasantville
Embarrassingly, I seemed to have been the last among the thousands at DAC on Monday to have heard the crucial rumor that Cadence was going to go private via a $6.4 billion infusion of cash from either KKR (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts), the Blackstone Group, or both. But heck, between the Women’s Workshop, the GM keynote, and the IP Panel, it had been a busy day. By 4 PM, I suddenly found I had some rumor-mill catching up to do.
The Cadence story appears to have started early on with a report in the New York Times quoting unnamed sources about the deal, which was then picked up by everybody and their brother on Monday and spun out as a “news” story in every publication even remotely connected to Cadence’s world. Not surprisingly, Cadence stock spiked immediately on the “news” and CEO Mike Fister was being hailed all over DAC as some kind of miracle worker. Comments like, “Heck, if he can get Cadence valuation up to $6.4 billion, you’ve got to hand it to the guy.”
demands of the investing public who kept asking why the company wasn’t growing or innovating faster. But even those with the most pointed criticisms, never failed to give begrudging respect to Mike Fister, EDA Man of the Hour on DAC Monday.
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-- Peggy Aycinena, EDACafe.com Contributing Editor.
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