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EDACafe Editorial

Archive for February, 2015

Invasive, Freaky, Leading-edge: The Shock of the New circa 2015

Thursday, February 26th, 2015

Art Critic Robert Hughes produced a difficult documentary in 1980 that assaulted the mind and eye with images and ideas associated with modern art, the visual arts of the 20th century. Now 35 years later and well into the 21st century, Hughes’ concept of things that are both new and shocking is more compelling than ever. This little essay is peppered with a few things which I think encapsulate The Shock of the New circa 2015.

Let’s start with the upcoming Trip to Mars. Last month it was announced that 100 people had been chosen from a field of 200,000 candidates worldwide to start to prepare for a one-way trip to Mars, slated to launch in 2024. Come’on, really? A one-way trip to Mars? It may sound like a way-cool nod to someone’s pluck and courage to be chosen for the trip, not to mention the technological tour de force needed to get the vehicle and passengers there — but do we honestly want to admire anybody whose death wish includes a long freaky trip to a planet that cannot support any of the life forms we’re aware of, including us? Really?

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Tags: drones, implantable RFID, Mars, Robert Hughes, self-driving car, The Shock of the New, traffic cam
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DVCon: in 12 minutes

Thursday, February 19th, 2015

DVCon is coming to San Jose from March 2nd to 5th. If you have any doubts about going, you should spend 12 minutes watching my interview [YouTube link below] with DVCon General Chair Yatin Trivedi of Synopsys and Technical Program Committee Chair Ambar Sarkar of Paradigm Works. The sheer joy these two gentlemen and their team are bringing to the work of organizing the upcoming event is totally evident there. And as they explain so well, these days that joy is not just limited to DVCon San Jose.

Now Yatin and Ambar, and many like-minded volunteers, are spreading the good works of the conference around the globe with DVCon Europe and DVCon India, newly launched companion events that debuted in 2014. Both were sell-out successes, according to Ambar and Yatin, and will now provide two additional opportunities each year for design and verification engineers to network, learn, and contribute. An impressive outcome of the efforts of so many, as noted enthusiastically in the interview.

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Tags: Ambar Sarkar, DVCon 2015, DVCon Europe, DVCon India, Yatin Trivedi
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Lauro Rizzatti: Still Bullish on EDA

Monday, February 16th, 2015

Lauro Rizzatti, formerly VP of Marketing at verification-centric EVE, thought he was going to move to Oregon last year and retire, but he was wrong. Instead he is busier than ever, hard at work both in the EDA tech sector and in the larger world of venture capital.

Lauro is consulting with Mentor Graphics to promote the company’s ever-expanding presence in the world of emulation, and he is also involved with the Oregon Angel Fund, a group of investors led by Eric Rosenfeld and former SpringSoft USA President Scott Sandler, also busy residents of Oregon.

Mentor is one of the top two emulation companies in the world, along with Cadence. Synopsys also has a foot in the door of that market thanks to their 2012 acquisition of EVE, which brings us back to Lauro. It was after his year spent at Synopsys following the acquisition that he ‘retired’ to Oregon. Clearly, however, it was a waste of his 30+ years of experience in verification to not have him continue contributing to the conversation around that technology, hence his consulting work at Mentor.

I had a chance to talk with Lauro about all of this in a recent phone call, a discussion in which he celebrated the green of Oregon while also gently chiding the endless rain that makes that lushness possible.

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Tags: Cadence, custom FPGAs, Emulation, Eric Rosenfeld, EVE, IBM, Lauro Rizzatti, Mentor Graphics, Oregon Angel Fund, Scott Sandler, SPICE, Synopsys, Xilinx
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