Posts Tagged ‘Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli’
Thursday, December 7th, 2017
Academics are a special breed of animal, especially those who have also succeeded in business. They vacillate wildly between the conventional and the visionary, between the tangible realities of life and the far-flung concepts of blue-sky, what-if thinking. And this year’s Kaufman Award winner is no exception.
Professor Rob Rutenbar grew up in the suburbs of Detroit, did his undergrad at Wayne State University, his PhD at University of Michigan, was on the faculty at Carnegie-Mellon for 25 years, during which time he co-founded Neolinear and sold it to Cadence, and then picked up and moved to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he put the university and his own perseverance to the test by igniting the move to massively available online education. Now just this year, he has returned to the East Coast as Senior Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Pittsburgh.
All of this is very comprehensible and logical, but only on the face of things.
In fact, by his own admission, no small part of Rutenbar’s success is based on attendance at a random barbecue years ago, a bit of simultaneous happenstance, and a restless interest in what’s around the next corner. Which of course, is the classic definition of a bohemian. Or in Rutenbar’s case, the definition of a Kaufman Award winner.
[Spoiler alert: The following may include narrative that will appear in Rob Rutenbar’s talk on Thursday, February 8, 2018, when he accepts the Kaufman Award at the CEDA/ESD Alliance dinner in his honor in San Jose.]
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Tags: Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, Cadence Design Systems, Carnegie Mellon University, Center for Circuit and System Solutions, Charles Bunzli, Coursera, ESD Alliance, IEEE CEDA, John Cohn, Kaufman Award, Martin Wong, MOOC, Neolinear, Patrick Groeneveld, Ramesh Harjani, Rick Carley, Rob Rutenbar, Ron Rohrer, Tom Beckley, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Minnesota, University of Pittsburgh, Voci Technologies Inc.
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Thursday, November 30th, 2017
Of all the stories associated with Cadence Design Systems, the saga of Lip-Bu Tan might be considered the most unlikely. After all, this is the company that launched one of the most flamboyant CEOs in the history of EDA, followed by one of the most outspoken, then one of the least prepared given his non-tech provenance, and finally one of the most distinctly over-paid in the history of the industry and Silicon Valley.
And all of that even before the corporate cataclysm of 2008. Few at the company in the fall of that year may have noticed the economy teetering on a cliff, because they were too busy tracking unbelievable developments within their own firewall.
On October 15, 2008, a thorough house-cleaning gutted the executive suite: The CEO, all EVPs, and a smattering of others were out, leaving the company leaderless and without an apparent rudder. Instantly the company stock tanked and more than a dozen shareholder lawsuits erupted from that special place from whence such things spring as spontaneously as lawyers after an ambulance.
Into this chaos stepped Lip-Bu Tan. Admittedly, he was no stranger to Cadence having been on the board for several years at that point, but was neither chairman like Stanford’s John Shoven, nor an EDA household name like Berkeley’s Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli.
Also surprising: On paper Tan looked more quintessential VC than quintessential CEO, given his track record founding and managing Walden International’s $2 billion investment portfolio. Nonetheless, it was Lip-Bu Tan’s name that suddenly appeared in the press releases announcing the new Interim CEO.
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Tags: Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, Cadence, Chenming Hu, Denali, ESD Alliance, Forte, Jasper, John Shoven, Lip-bu Tan, Moore's Law, Sigrity, Stanford, Tensilica, UC Berkeley, Walden International
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Wednesday, May 15th, 2013
Not all of the 1600+ people who attended DATE 2013 earlier this year in Grenoble were able to fit into the room where the panel celebrating 30+ years of the Mead-Conway VLSI Revolution took place. Those who could, however, were treated to a lively 90 minutes of conversation on what that revolution meant to the world of electronics and chip design.
Organized by Synopsys’ Marco Casale-Rossi and moderated by U.C. Berkeley’s Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, panelists included Berkeley’s Jan Rabaey, IMEC’s Hugo de Man, CMP’s Bernard Courtois, Columbia University’s Luca Carloni, and Synopsys’ Antun Domic.
Although I was among those disappointed to have missed the event, I was able to speak after the fact with Antun Domic. He described the ambiance of the SRO session in Grenoble and enumerated several of the points laid out by the panelists, starting with their praise of Lynn Conway and Carver Mead’s ground breaking text book, published in 1980, Introduction to VLSI Systems.
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Tags: Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, Antun Domic, Bernard Courtois, Carver Mead, CMP, Columbia, DATE 2013, DEC, Hugo de Man, IBM, Imec, Introduction to VLSI Systems, Jan Rabaey, Luca Carloni, Lynn Conway, Marco Casale-Rossi, Mead-Conway VLSI Revolution, MOSIS, Synopsys, TSMC, U.C. Berkeley, UMC
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Thursday, March 7th, 2013
If you were lucky enough to be at the ISQED Poster Session in Silicon Valley on Tuesday afternoon, March 5th, you had a chance to speak with various university students presenting novel work, various industry researchers presenting new ideas, and Chi-Foon Chan, Co-CEO of Synopsys, whose long involvement with ISQED, and deep and abiding interest in the underlying technology, fueled lively conversations as he too visited posters being presented by academia and industry alike.
As well, you would have had a chance to speak with Prof. Daniela De Venuto from the Politecnico di Bari. She told me about her research into implanted devices which monitor rate of chemical absorption in the digestive tract, and ways in which the resulting data could impact our understanding of the biochemistry of drug delivery mechanisms.
She also told me about various fascinating sessions at the upcoming DATE 2013 conference in Grenoble, starting on March 18th. These sessions are of particular merit for anyone interested in the interface between biological systems, electronic systems, environmental systems, and all manner of collaborative research embracing them all.
On March 21st, Prof. De Venuto is chairing a session on Smart Health along with U.C. Berkeley Prof. Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli. The session is part of a Special Day on Electronic Technologies for Smart Cities.
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Tags: Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, Chi-Foon Chan, Daniela De Venuto, DATE 2013, EPFL, Imec, ISQED 2013, Politecnico di Bari, Synopsys, U.C. Berkeley
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Thursday, February 14th, 2013
These several months are a great time to learn how the innovations of Lynn Conway and Carver Mead influenced the arc of history of the microelectronics industry.
The entire fall issue of IEEE’s Solid State Circuits Magazine is dedicated to Lynn Conway’s contributions to VLSI design and manufacturing. Monday morning, February 18th, Carver Mead will be keynoting at the opening plenary session of ISSCC in San Francisco. And next month at DATE 2013 in Grenoble, a panel entitled “The Heritage of Mead & Conway” will take place in Tuesday, March 19th.
The DATE panel will be moderated by U.C. Berkeley’s Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, and will include IMEC’s Hugo de Man, Synopsys’ Antun Domic, U.C. Berkeley’s Jan Rabaey, CMP’s Bernard Courtois, and Columbia’s Luca Carloni. Per the conference program, the panel will discuss “what has remained the same [since the Mead-Conway VLSI Revolution], what was missed, what has changed, and what lies ahead.”
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Tags: Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, Antun Domic, Bernard Courtois, Carver Mead, DATE 2013, Hugo de Man, Introduction to VLSI Design, ISSCC 2013, Jan Rabaey, Luca Carloni, Lynn Conway, Mead-Conway, Solid State Circuits Magazine, VLSI Revolution
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Saturday, March 3rd, 2012
The premier EDA conference in Europe – many say, in the world – will be in Dresden this year, starting March 12th. There’s a certain something about DATE, a unique quality and consistent energy that runs throughout this conference that really sets it apart, whether in Nice, Munich, Grenoble, or Dresden.
Now in its 15th edition, Design, Automation & Test in Europe seems to get better with each passing year – more refined, focused, and confident, and more unabashedly academic, while still offering a rich experience for exhibitors wanting to showcase their latest and greatest.
With 55+ exhibitors this year, over 200 papers selected from almost a thousand submissions for the 2012 conference, 77 different technical sessions, keynotes from Bosch Automotive Electronics Division President Klaus Meder, and GlobalFoundries Senior Vice President for Design Enablement Mojy Chian, a host of tutorials, panel discussions, and workshops, a Sigda-sponsored PhD forum, and the annual EDAA Lifetime Achievement Award presentation – this year going to UC Berkeley’s own Prof. Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli – DATE is on tap to deliver another terrific week-long event.
University of Tübingen Dean of Science Prof. Wolfgang Rosenstiel is General Chair for DATE 2012. Not surprisingly, when we spoke by phone on March 2nd, he was extremely enthused about the Dresden event. I asked him how the conference has evolved over the years.
Dr. Rosenstiel said, “DATE started in 1998 as the merger of two other European conferences, EURO-DAC and ED&T. Since then, DATE has taken place every year, mainly between France and Germany.
“What has changed over the years? While we have kept the central theme of design, automation, and test in Europe, from there we have widened the focus in two directions.
“The applications of microelectronics have come more clearly into focus at DATE, with special tracks which continue to grow, and there has been an increasing emphasis on embedded systems.
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Tags: Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, Bosch, DAC, DATE 2012, Design Automation, Design Automation & Test in Europe, Dresden, Embedded Systems, Embedded World, GlobalFoundries, Klaus Meder, Mofy Chian, System-level design, Test, University of Tübingen, Wolfgang Rosenstiel
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