Guest Blogger Derek Magill
Derek Magill has been in Engineering IT support for 20 years, starting out on the UNIX Help Desk at Texas Instruments. Over the years, he has held various systems architecture and leadership roles. He currently is engineering cloud architecture lead and global EDA license infrastructure lead at … More » Design Infrastructure Alley at DAC 2019February 4th, 2019 by Derek Magill
2018 marked the first year of the Design Infrastructure Alley (DIA) at DAC. It was the first time that DAC devoted floor-space to discussing the unique IT needs of the semiconductor industry. Some of the big issues we are looking to address at DAC include: Increased Focus on Data/IP SecuritySemiconductor companies have traditionally had a very open, collegial way of working. The emphasis was on making it easy for engineers to collaborate. This was generally fine when companies created and owned virtually all of their own IP. However, with the rise of third party IP (and the unique legal agreement for each set of IPs), it’s no longer acceptable to have “open access” to data. This is a significant IT, engineering and business challenge that will require a great deal of work to correct without wreaking havoc with design schedules. CAD flows which engineers have used for years will likely face challenges in a “locked down” environment, as the new rules will surely break an underlying data access assumption embedded deep within them. “Locking down” your IP is really just the first step. Having a data governance process and the tooling in order to give it teeth are the “long poles in the tent”. While there are several tools on the market to help with this, each company implements its own set of rules and procedures, making it difficult The CloudMany industries are moving workloads to the Cloud and abandoning on-premise datacenters. Semiconductor has long been a notable hold-out. But with the growth in that sector continuing to accelerate, it is a question of when and not if the Semi industry will begin utilizing the Cloud. There are great benefits to Cloud architectures, but still some significant challenges we face in our industry.
Getting the Most Out of Existing InvestmentsSecurity and Cloud get a lot of attention for good reason, but the fact remains that Semiconductor companies have large investments in Compute, Storage, Networking and Software that will continue to live on-premise for the foreseeable future. It is the responsibility of every Engineering IT organization to maximize those investments. DAC is the best place for administrators and flow owners in our industry to collaborate on our unique challenges. DIA Is For IT Professionals, CAD/Flow OwnersIf you are involved in initiatives at your company regarding any of the above, DIA 2019 is going to be a great resource for you to take home practical knowledge about how to address them. The Design-On-Cloud Pavilion will have non-stop presentations focusing on solutions to these big issues from some of the most innovative suppliers in the industry. In addition, we are working on several Workshops focused on giving you practical, guided advice on how to do things like:
2018 was a great start to the DIA. Join us from June 2-6 in Las Vegas, Nevada for the Design Infrastructure Alley at the 56th Design Automation Conference! For more information visit: www.dac.com space is still available in the Design Infrastructure Alley for 2019. |