Kaufman Award winner Pat Pistilli: DAC and the birth of the EDA industry

Pat Pistilli shares his perspective on the evolution of DAC and EDA.

Interview conducted and edited by Mike Demler, Technical Editor -- EDN, December 2, 2010

DAC has become the EDA industry’s premier event. When you started, wasn’t DAC purely a technical conference?

A: For the first six years, the conference was known as SHarE [Society to Help avoid redundant Effort], and the technical papers were selected by me and a small group of industry CAD [computer-aided-design] people. It was invitation only. The first conference was in 1964, which we started with $1000 of our own money. We eventually got that money back.

What was the key for drawing attendees to DAC?

A: When we started, I worked at Bell Labs, where we developed our own tools for chip design, boards, etc. The EDA industry developed later when people broke off from these internal groups to start their own companies. As the industry grew, companies like Daisy, Mentor, and CalComp were popping up—so there was motivation to add vendors to DAC. It became important to bring in exhibitors for smaller companies that could not afford to develop their own tools in house. It was convenient to go to DAC and see everything in three days.

We were an all-volunteer organization for 21 years. The executive committee members were spending a lot of time on it, so the feeling was that DAC had become too big and it was time to bring in an outside vendor to run it. That is when my wife Marie persuaded me to leave Bell Labs to start MP Associates, and we continue as a vendor of DAC. Many people think we own DAC but we don’t, though Joe Costello [former chief executive officer of Cadence] once said, “The only one making money in EDA is Pistilli!"

DAC continues as both a technical conference and a trade show. What is the relationship between MP Associates and the IEEE?

A: Initially the SIGDA [Special Interest Group on Design Automation] of ACM [Association for Computing Machinery] was a sponsor. Professors were coming into the business, and they need to publish under IEEE for credibility, so the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society was added as a sponsor. Four years ago the IEEE formed CEDA [Council on Electronic Design Automation] to put all EDA-related conferences under one umbrella. Exhibitors formed EDAC [Electronic Design Automation Consortium], and they now have a one-third share with CEDA and ACM.

Tell me about the Pat Pistilli Scholarship.

A: During the volunteer years, we generated a surplus of $200,000 to $250,000. The first year that MP ran DAC, we generated a surplus of nearly $1million. The total surplus went to IEEE and ACM, and a small amount of “seed money” was given to MP to start all over for next year. The surplus is smaller now, but it is used to sponsor the university booth, and to provide travel grants to students. The scholarship was established for the advancement of computer science and electrical engineering, annually awarding two $20,000 scholarships to members of under-represented groups, including women, minorities and the disabled.

Are there other technical conferences that MP Associates has been involved in?

A: We also created Euro-DAC [now DATE, Design, Automation, and Test in Europe], and ran it for three years until a European company was brought in. We also manage the International Microwave conference and ICCAD [International Conference on Computer Aided Design]. MP Associates also does registration, at our cost, for a lot of small IEEE conferences.

In some of your interviews, you have said that few new EDA products have come out over the past few years. Can you expand on that thought?

A: There was a time that CAD tools exceeded manufacturing capability; now it is the reverse. Tools have not kept up with what can be built. Now all the new stuff is being done at universities, funded by the EDA companies. We had 150 people in CAD development at Bell Labs. Now, the internal CAD departments are spending most of their time just coordinating tools they are purchasing, not developing.

Do you think the EDA industry does enough to make tools work together?

A: The EDA industry is competitive. They are not going to help each other. Andy Graham [former president of the CFI (CAD Framework Initiative) and the Si2 (Silicon Integration Initiative)] tried and failed. Some standards are not accepted because the vendors have too much invested in proprietary formats. I wish it would happen; it would make it easier for people to buy tools and have them work together. Companies are looking out for their own interest, for the bottom line.

Who was the most interesting person that you have met in EDA?

A: There is no question at all! It was Richard Newton. He was a good, good friend. He was a strict vegetarian, and Marie would make him a special dinner. We would finish off a bottle of wine or two and talk for hours. He was brilliant. A lot of companies had Richard on their boards. He was most respected.

Do you think that DAC misses flamboyant personalities like Joe Costello?

A: A little bit, not much though. Look at people still on boards of EDA companies, like Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli. Joe had a way about him. He came from marketing. He helped build the EDA industry to what it is now. But there are many smart, brilliant people in EDA. People at Bell Labs were smart engineers, but didn’t have the greatest business sense. Once they had to be competitive we were in trouble, because we had been a monopoly.

With the recession, and overall shrinking of DAC and the EDA industry, do you think it would be beneficial for some of DAC’s events to be streamed live for online attendees?

A: Maybe we don’t do it live, but we are putting keynotes online now. The most important thing at DAC is to be hands-on with exhibits. The biggest advantage of being in person is networking. Go to a restaurant near DAC, and you’ll hear lots of conversations. You don’t get that online, you only get what a vendor wants to tell you.

You’ve been interviewed many times in recognition of receiving the Kaufman award. Is there one question that you think should have been asked that hasn’t?

A: I’ve had 14 interviews and there is one more coming. The one thing nobody has asked me: “What would you do differently if you knew in 1964 what you know now?” I’ve thought about it many times; look at how the industry has evolved. I had a chance in the early 1970s to start my own CAD-development company. A DAC chairman asked me to leave Bell Labs. I couldn’t do it because I was having so much fun developing these things. I was on a high all the time! I thought I can’t drop everything. I would have been a multi-milionaire now. My friend has been a big success. If I had to do it over again, I may have jumped. But I’m not sorry I didn’t. Bell Labs was so good to me for 21 years. Without their support DAC would not be what it is today. I was never denied a tool or people I needed.