Over the nearly two years we’ve been blogging on The Breker Trekker, some of the most popular posts have been our previews of, and reports from, the annual Design Automation Conference (DAC). The show remains a must-attend event for all EDA vendors and users. One of the key ingredients for its success it that it is really two events in one: a strong technical conference with peer-reviewed papers and a formal Proceedings, plus a busy exhibition floor with vendor booths and suites for prospecting, demos, and update meetings with current customers.
For me personally, it’s almost impossible to imagine not going to DAC. I’ve attended every show since 1988 for at least one of its days, and in many cases for the entire run. DAC stories might be a fun topic for a future post but today I’m going to look ahead rather than back. The technical program for the 52nd DAC was unveiled a few days ago and I’ve been scrolling through the pages on the Web site to see who’s speaking and what topics are hot. This post offers some initial thoughts on sessions likely to be of interest to you, our readers, and a few predictions on what will emerge as the major themes for 2015.
Last October, I had a lively conversation with Tanner EDA President Greg Lebsack. He was enthused about the company’s tools, technology innovations, and future. For that reason, it seemed surprising to hear that Tanner was acquired by Mentor Graphics. A close reading of the March 3, 2015, press announcement suggests Mentor intends to continue to support Tanner’s products despite a possible overlap between some of the tools of the two companies, fully acknowledged in the press release.
Mentor Graphics today announced it has acquired the business assets of Tanner EDA, a leading tool provider for the design, layout and verification of analog/mixed-signal and MEMS integrated circuits. With this acquisition, more designers will now have access to Tanner’s AMS products based on the strength and reach of the Mentor Graphics global sales organization. All Tanner EDA products as well as existing AMS products from Mentor will continue to be available and supported.
A quote from Greg Lebsack was included: “Tanner EDA has built an outstanding reputation as the price performance leader for the design, layout and verification of AMS ICs, MEMS and IoT devices. We are excited to join Mentor Graphics where we can leverage their extensive technology leadership and global footprint. We view this transaction as very positive for Tanner EDA’s customers, employees and the industry as a whole.”
I have no doubt that President Lebsack backed the sentiments attributed to him, but it’s hard to understand how melding the tools from Tanner into the Mentor armamentum is good for Tanner’s customers, or the industry as a whole.
Early Monday morning, Synopsys announced several new bits have been added to their impressive bucket of IP blocks, a new family of DesignWare processors targeted at vision applications. With an honorable pedigree – descent from the ARC technology that came to Synopsys via the 2010 acquisition of Virage Logic – the processors announced on March 30th are designed to be embedded in SoCs, specifically to meet a growing need to digitally “distinguish smiles from frowns, faces from cars, baby carriages from trees or dogs, and even sky from ground.”
These needs were articulated in a March 26th phone call with Synopsys Senior Manager of Product Marketing Mike Thompson, who enthusiastically explained, “The vision market will grow dramatically over the next several years. The next 10-to-15 years will be seen as a paradigm-shift period in how we interact with technology.”
That’s why he’s delighted Synopsys will surpass other players in driving that shift: “There are already a few vision processors available [on the market], and they are largely programmable. We took a slightly different approach, however, with the new DesignWare EV Processors we’ve developed.
“Shift Left” has become a hot phrase after Aart’s keynote speech at DVCon2015 where he talked about how shifting left in schedule resulted from 10x productivity gain in design, IP, verification and software can spur on 100x opportunities in applications across all fields. He suggested many of these technological advances have the potential of changing what mankind is all about.
Static and formal techniques were mentioned as one of the mechanisms that increase productivity and contribute to shift left in the verification schedule. There are several reasons why formal technology is a key driver for the left shift.