There are three reasons why DAC will be spectacular come June in Austin: It’s the 50th instantiation of the conference; for the first time ever DAC is coming to the home of Office Space; and Synopsys Solutions Group Chief Architect Yervant Zorian will be General Chair, which means the 2013 Design Automation Conference has got the very best in the business at the top, a guy who’s CV includes leading committees of all shapes and sizes, IEEE Standards initiatives, and a variety of conferences, big and small.

Zorian’s track record in the industry is well known. My own article, Yervant Zorian: Grand Master of Time Management, was published on the DAC website in 2007. But all that said, it’s a personal recollection of Yervant Zorian that I prefer.

In 1999, I was tasked with writing my first Focus Report for ISD Magazine, a now-defunct publication of Miller Freeman CMP UBM, on the subject of DFT, Design for Test. Tets Maniwa was Editor in Chief of the magazine at the time and he suggested that I call Yervant Zorian for some technical background on DFT, BIST, and all that jazz.

(more…)