Skip navigation

Zibb

Between The Lines

Mike SantariniEDN Senior Editor Mike Santarini covers digital design and the EDA, ASIC, and FPGA industries. [Editor's note: As of Feb. 2008, this blog is no longer active and is presented here for archival purposes.]



   Advertisement

Profile

RSS Feed

  • Add this blog to your RSS newsreader!

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Most Commented On

Archives

By Category

IC Design Articles

Blog

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Did you like DAC? What do you think of conferences?

Jul 3 2007 5:41PM | Permalink |Comments (11) |


Now that a month has passed since the Design Automation Conference, I’m wondering for those of you who attended DAC, either users or vendors, what you thought of the show this year?

Attendance was down a bit from both a user and vendor perspective (that’s been well documented), but did you folks like the show, did you dislike it, and if so, what should change?

 

I realize that there hasn’t been an open, public forum for attendees to air their opinions of the show, so feel free to comment below.

 

At DAC, I heard from more than one big vendor, and even an EDAC board member, that DAC should seriously consider integrating with Semicon (a comment that is especially interesting when you take into account that EDAC owns a chunk of the show). A couple of vendors noted that their own "user conferences" had comparable user attendance to DAC, and, in vendor-run conferences, the individual vendors have their respective users’ undivided attention, don’t have any competitive views or tools in the next booth to contend with, and don’t have to share the spotlight with startups (that they may eventually have to buy for a premium because they inadvertently helped them get notoriety by footing a large chunk of the show). They didn’t say this explicitly, but they can also limit press access (claiming they do so, to make users/attendees more comfortable???)

 

I personally believe that independent, user-driven conferences are very important to the design industry. The problem of course is that most conferences today, even those that purport to be user-run conferences, truly aren’t user run conference or they are too marketing/sales focused, where vendors, rather than users, dictate the subject matter.

 

What do you think? Users, would you rather attend a conference run by the individual vendors or would you rather attend a conference run by users with multiple or even single vendors attending? Perhaps you would rather attend a webinar and skip all the travel?


Related entries in: ASICs | EDA | 

Reader Comments



at 7/4/2007 11:56:21 AM, Grant Martin said:
Mike, a great idea to get feedback. I enjoyed DAC 2007 very much. Three areas stood out:
1. Some very interesting "community events", such as the OSCI and SPIRIT meetings held at DAC. It takes a large technical/industry gathering to get enough people to make them worthwhile.
2. Some excellent technical sessions. Too often people think of DAC solely as a trade show, but there is a lot of valuable information to learn by attending at least some of the technical programme.
3. Very useful meetings with vendors on the exhibit floor - usually smaller and newer ones - as well as some useful discussions with academic researchers also attending.

No vendor or user only event can provide the combination of technical meat, vendor breadth and community building that a good show like DAC can. As someone most interested in design and verification at the ESL, Software and RTL levels, merging DAC with an IC-only event like Semicon would be a big mistake.

I am sure that DAC would welcome more user input (as co-chair of the technical programme in 2005 and 2006, I know how hard it is to get user participation) - so if any users want more input into the evolution of DAC, I suggest they contact the executive committee with their ideas and see how they can contribute.



at 7/5/2007 11:11:36 AM, Daniel Payne said:
DAC 2007 was another important social and business event for consultants like myself who need to network with EDA executives, uncover new EDA companies (like Analog Rails), touch base with former co-workers and clients, and exchange ideas about what the new challenges in EDA are and which companies are planning to expand into new areas. I wrote a brief trip report on my experience in the EDAcafe forums.



at 7/5/2007 12:20:11 PM, Kolibok said:
DAC needs some original thinking to draw engineers to the event.
DAC organizers should face two realities:
1) Consolidation in the EDA industry will diminish the number of startups and the number of exhibitors.
2) Attendance at industry trade shows is steadily declining.

Yes, there is no substitute for face-to-face interaction.

OTOH, there are many alternatives for a company to communicate with customers and prospects.

Our company exhibited at DAC last year and this year. We were happy that we bought the smallest booth size, as the qualified leads produced were slightly less than last year. We reserved the smallest exhibit size again for next year.

DAC needs to lose some of their attitude and think about how to draw engineers. Almost half the attendees at DAC are vendors:
"More than 9,000 attended the 44th DAC at the San Diego Convention Center
June 4-8 when the EDA industry gathered for its premier annual event.
The total attendees were 4,701 general conference and exhibit attendees,
and another 4,304 event participants, comprised of exhibitors, visitors
and guests. The total figure of 9005 is slightly less than the previous
year when the conference was held in San Francisco and it is due to the
larger influx last year of local engineers to the Free Monday event."



at 7/5/2007 2:06:16 PM, Steve Cox said:
Hi Mike,
From an exhibitor's perspective (Target Compiler Technologies), we thought DAC was decent this year. Numbers were down, but lead quality seemed to be up. Certainly, it ran far too long. Thursday exhibits were completely unnecessary. Also, I took a look at Semicon's web-site to acquaint myself with that show. I have to agree with Grant. Being so semiconductor and IC focused, Semicon would only be an appropriate home for what DAC has been, and not a good home at all for what DAC (hopefully) will be. Yes, I''m referring to the ESL space (for those who haven''t read it yet, there is a great post, with many reader comments, in Mike''s blog entry for ESL - check it out). Clearly, a move to Semicon would leave this new (and important!) segment of the tools market without a home. Sure, the Embedded Systems Conference provides a reasonable alternative, but we actually show at both. I''d say, at this point, while there are many great points about ESC (public teardowns, stronger software and systems focus), our best value is still DAC. I think this is because people who actually participate in the design of systems that are either SoC or FPGA based attend DAC (this is our target market). Whereas, ESC is (quite) a bit more commodity hardware focused. cheers, - Steve Cox




at 7/5/2007 2:18:33 PM, dissappointedDAC said:
Things that need to change:
1) Less focus on 'magic, games etc'. Attendees forget why they are sent by their company and spend more time watching the fun stuff instead of truly evaluating vendors
2) Open some time when papers are not being held so attendees have time to look at vendors who foot most of the DAC bill. There is little time for the serious paper enthusiast to get to the floor to see the vendors.
3) While the DAC sponsored floor activity is nice in the right context, it competes for attendee time with the vendors who are footing the bill for the floor space. I love to hear about talks from Astronauts etc, but not during the $1K-5K per hour that vendors have paid. That's right if you calculate it out that's what the vendors pay depending on the booth size.
4) change the name to IC design automation. It's not so much Electronic Design (boards, systems, etc) but IC Design Automation.



at 7/5/2007 3:33:20 PM, Michael Santarini said:
Great comments so far. I think you all make some great points. I think dissappointedDAC made some great suggestions. A few shows that I’ve attended have had breaks to lure folks to the show floor “lunch break on the show floor” or something like “beer from around the world.” Certainly one of the great things about DAC is there is so much to attend. And putting a schedule together with a mix of papers, panels and tool demos/evaluation can be tricky. As an editor covering the show live, I miss a lot of the content because a day typically goes like this: attend a morning panel, run back to hotel room write it up and file it for posting on the web (miss a session while writing), attend an early afternoon panel, run back to the hotel room write it up and file it for posting to the web, then repeat for a late afternoon panel…Every once in a while the panel you attend turns into a marketing/sales pitch and becomes a waste of time…something I certainly don’t want to bug you with by repeating a fluffy sales pitch. Also, I find your suggestion for the DAC name change intriguiging. You make a very good point that DAC is mostly focused on IC design, and I’d suggest mostly on digital IC design. Maybe if they wanted to have a truer, more all encompasing EDA focus, they should have an IC design, an FPGA design and a system design tracks, maybe run them concurrently, maybe even have a more dedicated analog IC track but be sure all tracks have similar break times for vendor visits. In the past, DAC has tried to attract embedded engineers (and embedded sw vendors) but they really aren’t the same crowd as the hardware design folks. I’ve noticed in the last couple of years that the folks at DesignCon do a pretty good job with both systems/pcb and analog design, as well as IC design tracks. They have some great user driven presentations…certainly worth a look at the agenda. Also, I’m wondering why DAC is never at the San Jose convention center? Some folks have suggested that it is too small for DAC but Embedded Systems is held there so it can’t be too small, can it? (Embedded seems larger than DAC) Is it a hotel mafia thing? I like to travel to exotic locations like Anaheim too but it seems if they really wanted to get attendence up and wanted to make it more reasonable for vendors to attend, why don’t they do it in SJ. 95% of the industry is here and most companies have HQs here also. Thanks for the comments…keep them coming.



at 7/9/2007 4:23:40 PM, JL Gray said:
Mike,

Three of my colleagues and I attended DAC and got significant benefit from having the opportunity to speak with vendors about new tools and to network with clients/potential clients, and partners/potential partners.

This was my first time at DAC so it is difficult for me to compare to previous years, but the conference compared favorably to DVCon and DATE. DVCon was far more focused on the verification space (my primary area of interest) but there were far more vendors to see and networking opportunities to take advantage of at DAC. DATE was a good opportunity for me to catch up with colleagues and clients in Europe, but the technical sessions were far too academic for my taste.

I can definitely appreciate the problem you mentioned where you weren't able to get to as many of the technical sessions as you would have liked. Unlike one of the other commenters, I would have liked to have more time Thursday afternoon to continue exploring the exhibition floor.

JL



at 7/12/2007 11:40:34 AM, CYI said:
<< Also, I’m wondering why DAC is never at the San Jose convention center? Some folks have suggested that it is too small for DAC but Embedded Systems is held there so it can’t be too small, can it? >>

In terms of exhibit space (sq ft):

San Jose - 143,000
Moscone - 441,960
Anaheim - 815,000
New Orleans - 1,100,000
Las Vegas - 1,940,631



at 7/13/2007 9:09:05 AM, Michael Santarini said:
Thanks CYI, wow, it is pretty small in comparison to other convention centers where DAC has been held. But the big question is: is the SJ convention center too small for DAC. How much floor exhibition space does the show usually require?



at 7/17/2007 10:06:55 AM, CYI said:
Hi Mike, DAC requires a minimum of 440,000 sq ft of exhibition space, so Moscone just barely meets the minimum requirements. As you can see, San Jose is way too small. Other venues that have hosted DAC recently: San Diego - 615,701, Los Angeles - 720,000.



at 7/18/2007 12:06:40 PM, Michael Santarini said:
Wow, so the SJ convention center is way too small...which makes one wonder what the heck the SJ city council was thinking when they built it

Post a comment



Display Name

Change Image
Before submitting this form, please type the characters displayed above.
Note the letters are NOT case sensitive.


ADVERTISEMENT

About Us   |   Contact Us   |   Free Email Newsletters   |   Free Magazine Subscription  |   Advertising   |   RSSRSS   

©1997-2009 Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Use of this Web site is subject to its Terms of Use | Privacy Policy

Please visit these other Reed Business sites