IP Showcase 
Peggy Aycinena
Peggy Aycinena is a contributing editor for EDACafe.Com eSilicon: Jack Harding unpluggedJune 19th, 2014 by Peggy Aycinena
Among the least likely events to take place at a conference as big and noisy as the Design Automation Conference is an intense, unplugged conversation with an industry leader, especially in the midst of the Exhibit Hall. Nonetheless, I had a chance to sit and talk with eSilicon co-founder and CEO Jack Harding for almost an hour in his company booth on Monday morning, June 2nd, at DAC in San Francisco. In the background, outside the flimsy walls of the suite in which we were talking, one could hear the roar of the opening-hour crowd in the exhibit hall, mixed with the unmistakable sounds of Gary Smith revving up nearby for his annual Pavilion Panel in that blues band style he favors. Prior to June 2nd, I hadn’t seen Jack Harding for 7 years. At that time, thanks to Brian Fuller’s eavesdropping on a private conversation, my disagreement with Jack about how tech leaders get their kids to study technology ended up in Brian’s blog for all the world to read. If Jack knew, he probably didn’t care – he’s always lived by his own rules – whereas I followed rules written by others, so I did care and hence approached this month’s appointment at DAC with marked trepidation. How unnecessary. Harding never mentioned our disagreement in 2007. Instead I found him a great conversationalist, honest, self-effacing in a particular way, and interested in a wide range of issues. Naturally, I don’t regret Brian Fuller wasn’t hovering nearby to report out on the conversation, but I do regret Jack and I didn’t have an additional hour to chat in San Francisco. He began by reminding me that success in the tech sector can depend on a host of “exogenous variables.” IP360: SNPS takes page from CDNS playbookJune 4th, 2014 by Peggy Aycinena
This week, in the early hours just prior to the opening of DAC, Synopsys announced a new initiative to reshape the world of IP. It’s called the IP Accelerated initiative, but it might as well as be called IP360. Just as Cadence’s EDA360 initiative was meant to reshape the design tool flow in the image of Cadence, Synopsys’ IP360 is meant to reshape the IP use and integration flow in the image of Synopsys. And where EDA360 had three parts: System, SoC, and Silicon Realization, so IP360 has three parts: IP Prototyping, Architecting, and Integration. More specifically, the IP Accelerated initiative includes new IP prototyping kits with reference designs for IP preloaded into a HAPS-DX prototyping system, software development kits with processor subsystem reference designs and configurable models of DesignWare IP, and customized IP subsystems to augment Synopsys’ IP portfolio. In other words, it’s all about “one-stop shopping,” per my September 30th conversation with Synopsys’ John Koeter, VP of Marketing for IP & Prototyping. “Synopsys has a broad portfolio of high-quality IP,” he said, and that combined with “our development kits for prototyping and software developmental” means that if you know how to reach Synopsys, you’re set and ready to go. Arrow Devices: VIP meet & greetMay 29th, 2014 by Peggy Aycinena
Take a moment to meet Arrow Devices. Although they will be exhibiting at DAC next week in San Francisco, Arrow is based in Bangalore so the following interview was conducted via email. I’m speaking here with Aditya Mittal. Before establishing the company, Mittal was a Senior Design Engineer at Nvidia. IP @ DAC: Parties, Stuff & BotherMay 22nd, 2014 by Peggy Aycinena
It’s just amazing that DAC has become so thoroughly a show about IP that there are two major parties happening in San Francisco in June that have IP in their name: HOT IP Party and Stars of IP Party. HLS Vision: Sanjiv Kaul’s betting his career on itMay 15th, 2014 by Peggy Aycinena
Calypto Design Systems is having quite a year. First the company announced that 2013 was its highest revenue period ever; then they announced that new offices have been opened in Korea; and most recently, Calypto named long-time EDA exec Mark Milligan as Vice President of Marketing. Previously, Milligan served as VP of Marketing at CoWare and VirtualLogix, VP of Marketing for Functional Verification at Synopsys, and VP of Corporate Marketing at SpringSoft before it was acquired by Synopsys. Given this level of activity, it was interesting to sit down recently and talk in person with Calypto CEO Sanjiv Kaul, an articulate and energetic spokesman for the company. We started with Cadence’s recent purchase of Forte Design Systems. Kaul said, “Cadence bought Forte because high-level synthesis is going mainstream, and we think we are well positioned to take advantage of that. Integration between Catapult C [Calypto’s HLS synthesis tool, acquired from Mentor Graphics in 2011] and our Formal tool is what the market needs today.” Read the rest of HLS Vision: Sanjiv Kaul’s betting his career on it MyDesign: Final answers from IPextreme’s Warren SavageMay 1st, 2014 by Peggy Aycinena
Two things happened as a result of falling and breaking my right arm early on the morning of April 19th in Monterey: I instantly became a ‘Lefty’ for the first time in my life, and I missed Warren Savage’s presentation at EDPS later that day. Warren is CEO and President of IPextreme, and I kid you not when I say that what he doesn’t know about the IP industry isn’t worth knowing. That’s why I wanted to hear Warren’s talk, and why I was very happy to talk to him this week about my Dick Tracy keychain project. How do I learn to be a knowledgeable customer of the IP industry, I asked Warren, particularly when my hypothetical wearable is something I could really use right now: An SoC-based gadget, built with oodles of IP, to wear on my left wrist that’s got one small button to remotely unlock my car, one that will start my car, one that will open or close the garage door, one that will tell me if I’ve got enough milk in the fridge, one that will turn the heat up and down at home even if I’m not there, and prosaically, one that will show me the time. Of course, now that I can’t use my right hand to push the buttons on the device strapped to my left wrist, I no longer want buttons. I want the thing to respond to voice commands – “Unlock.” “Ignition.” “Garage.” “Got milk?” “Set temp.” “Time?” – simple instructions that should only produce results when it’s my voice and nobody else’s. Warren was extremely informative during our phone call. He understood I wasn’t looking for specific help with my design, but how to shop for the IP to go into my design. I started by telling him that my research into IP has so far included conversations with: CAST – Hal Barbour, Nikos Zervas, and Paul Lindemann To further clarify the information gleaned from these people, my questions for Warren were very succinct, as were his answers. Read the rest of MyDesign: Final answers from IPextreme’s Warren Savage Jasper OpEd: Atrenta, Cadence, Elmer et alApril 24th, 2014 by Peggy Aycinena
This week, Cadence announced its intention to acquire Jasper Design Automation. The news precipitated a tsunami of commentary, some of which is included in this blog: Atrenta’s Piyush Sancheti deems the move to be a good one; Cadence’s Craig Cochran and Michal Siwinski second the motion; and Elmer, whose clairvoyance regarding a Jasper acquisition was criticized by Oz Levia last fall, asks if the Cadence move is more a matter of window dressing. Finally, I offer a brief prediction regarding one possible long-term effect of this M&A. Finally: IP now an Anchor Tenant at DAC!March 20th, 2014 by Peggy Aycinena
Thanks to a lot of hard work and perseverance on the part of various thought leaders in the IP industry – folks like Mike McNamara, Warren Savage, McKenzie Mortensen, Clark Chen, Devin Persaud, Tiffany Sparks, Yervant Zorian, and Farzad Zarrinfar – at last, IP has become an anchor tenant at DAC. A situation that’s been far too long in coming, given that these days there are approximately 30 companies in the EDA industry, but upwards of 500 in IP. The fact is, if DAC didn’t make itself available to showcase an industry with 10x more possible exhibitors than EDA, where’s the future of the conference anyway? I had a chance to speak with ‘Mac’ McNamara on Tuesday of this week about the IP Initiative he’s heading up for DAC 2014. [The others on the list above are on the committee.] Mac’s a legend in the EDA community based on his expertise and leadership roles at Chronologic, SureFire, Verisity and Cadence, where he headed up the company’s C-to-Silicon Compiler and Virtual Systems Platform. Mac left Cadence in 2012, and has served since then as CEO of Adapt IP, an IP startup that boasts both John Sanguinetti and Lucio Lanza on its board. During our conversation, Mac said that anyone planning on attending the Design Automation Conference this June in San Francisco will want to be there on Monday, June 2nd. That is, anyone who’s interested in the IP industry. |
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