Archive for April, 2016
Wednesday, April 27th, 2016
Last year at DAC in San Francisco, Synopsys’ Patrick Groeneveld and TUM Create’s Sebastian Steinhorst gave an afternoon tutorial addressing the energy equations around the current spate of electric vehicles. One of the most information-packed sessions I’ve ever attended at DAC, it reflected an enormous amount of work on the part of the two presenters.
Now here in April 2016, rumor and information in the press about EVs is really on the upswing. Apple is developing an EV in various top-secret locations scattered about Silicon Valley, a rumor supported by the company hiring Tesla’s VP of Vehicle Engineering Chris Porritt. Tesla has its own dramatic announcement: As of mid-April, they’ve received upwards of 400,000 pre-production orders for their new $35,000 Model 3 sedan.
My recent phone call with Patrick Groeneveld was an opportunity to further understand the current EV landscape: We began with the Tesla news.
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Tags: Apple, BMW, Chevy, Electric Vehicles, Elon Musk, EV, Ford, GM, GM Korea, Mercedes, Model 3, NUMMI, Patrick Groeneveld, Sebastian Steinhorst, Steve Wozniak, Tesla, Toyota, VW
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Thursday, April 21st, 2016
Just as Auguste Rodin revived the art of sculpture at the end of the 19th century in Europe, and Wynton Marsalis rescued the art of jazz by the end of the 20th century in America, here in the 21st century University of Illinois CS professor Rob Rutenbar is resurrecting the art of teaching VLSI design around the world.
He’s doing that via his Coursera-based online class entitled VLSI CAD: Logic to Layout, a course with an enrollment that defies comprehension. Per Rutenbar’s own whimsy: “There are about 25,000 people working in the EDA industry today. About 55,000 of them have signed up for my class.”
I had a chance to speak by phone with Dr. Rutenbar earlier this week. He was sitting in his office in Urbana-Champaign, but looking out an academic landscape that encompasses the entire world.
[hint: a MOOC is a Massively Open Online Course.]
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Tags: Amazon, Auguste Rodin, Barnes-and-Noble, Borders, Cadence, Coursera, EDA, Google, Jeff Bezos, Massively Open Online Course, Microsoft, MOOC, Rob Rutenbar, Stanford, University of Illinois, VLSI CAD: Logic to Layout, VLSI Design, Wynton Marsalis
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Thursday, April 14th, 2016
The DAC family has lost another loved one. University of Pittsburgh ECE professor Steve Levitan passed away in early March and is going to be missed terribly in Austin in June.
I had a chance to interview Dr. Levitan in late 2006, as he was ramping up to serve as General Chair of the 44th DAC, and found him to be very sincere and down-to-earth. He was clearly one of those rare individuals who respected the balance between academia and industry, and how each sphere plays an equally critical role in pushing the envelope in electronic design automation. The text of that interview is available below.
Earlier this week, I received a note from Soha Hassoun, Professor and Chair of Computer Science at Tufts and General Chair of the 51st DAC in 2013. Professor Hassoun said that she and Penn State CSE Professor Mary Jane Irwin have written a very nice article memorializing Steve Levitan, set to be published in the May/June issue of IEEE Design and Test magazine.
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Tags: Design Automation Conference, Dr. Soha Hassoun, Dr. Steven Levitan, University of Pittsburgh
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Thursday, April 7th, 2016
Several weeks ago, before the EDA Consortium was re-branded as the ESD Alliance, I had a chance to speak by phone with Bob Smith, Executive Director of the organization. I started by asking what concerned him the most about the re-launch. Bob was too optimistic to pick up on that negative note.
Instead he said, “It looks like we’re going to have a really good turnout for our event next week on March 30th, with well over 100 people expected. We are billing the evening as 90-percent social and only 10-percent business. I’ll speak for about 5 minutes and no longer, introducing the new name for EDAC.
“Mostly we want to have a get-together where people who haven’t seen each for a long time can enjoy catching up. We honestly hope that people will just have a good time. Also, it’s great that a number of the board members will be there.”
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Tags: Aart de Geus, Bob Smith, EDA Consortium, ESD Alliance, Grant Pierce, Lip-bu Tan, Simon Segars, Wally Rhines
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