Congratulations to SoC Solutions and Silvaco! SoC Solutions will soon be under the Silvaco umbrella. (See the news release, “Silvaco to Acquire SoC Solutions.”

As a member of the ESD Alliance, SoC Solutions recently took full advantage of the well-honed expertise of our Export Committee. In fact, as SoC Solutions found, anyone who doubts the value of the ESD Alliance or its Export Committee won’t after learning that the three-person group took on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) and won.

Yes, consider the Export Committee formidable. Made up of representatives from Synopsys, Mentor and Cadence, it was able to persuade BIS to change a small but important piece of the Encryption and Export Administration Regulations. “In our EDA world, we have one main exemption that my committee gained for the industry back in 2005 –– decontrolling our usage of encryption in the design cycle,” says Cadence’s Larry Disenhof, the chair of the Export Committee. Only in the last year has the main body of encryption regulations caught up with our exemption fully decontrolling ancillary encryption used in products from DVD players and household appliances to protection of IP in electronic design, he added. “Without this exemption, we would have been filing license applications constantly for the last 10 years.”
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The following week, we’re off with rest of the semiconductor design ecosystem to Austin, Texas, for the Design Automation Conference (DAC). Events kick-off Sunday, June 18, and go through Thursday, June 22, with exhibits running Monday through Wednesday from10 a.m. until 6 p.m. at the Austin Convention Center.

The opening event, “Electronic Design Automation (EDA) in the Age of the System,” will update attendees on the state of EDA. Chief Analyst Laurie Balch of Gary Smith EDA will present the firm’s findings at this ESD Alliance-hosted event Sunday from 5 p.m. until 5:30 p.m. in Ballroom D of the convention center. A DAC reception immediately follows on the Fourth Floor Foyer. 

We’re pleased that so many of our board members will have visible roles in the DAC program, starting with Amit Gupta, president and CEO from Solido, who will moderate a panel titled, “EDA Powered by Machine Learning,” It will be held Monday in Room 10AB from 10:30 a.m. until 11:30 a.m

A “One-On-One” discussion with Lip-Bu Tan, president and CEO of Cadence, and Ed Sperling, editor-in-chief of Semiconductor Engineering, will be held Monday from 11:30 a.m. until 12:15 p.m. at the DAC Pavilion. Lip-Bu will share insights about big changes in the data center and end markets, the rise of machine learning, growing challenges in system design, and what to watch for in China.

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