Dr. Limor Fix
The Design Automation Conference (DAC) is among the most important accelerators of the electronic design industry. It is the meeting place for designers and design managers, for design automation engineers and their managers, for academics and students, for electronic Design Automation (EDA) companies and their employees, intellectual property (IP) providers and foundries.
Industry leaders meet at DAC. Market leaders, technical leaders, business leaders and thought leaders are at DAC. DAC is also the meeting place for many related organizations, such as standards bodies, including Accellera and Si2, and consortia that include MARCO GSRC. Overall, close to 10,000 people come to DAC, with attendees representing 1,000 different companies and institutions. Its exhibitors represent more than 250 companies.
Designers use DAC to voice their needs and design challenges in front of the tool development community. They also, within one intensive week, catch up on new tools, methodologies, design services and share experiences with designers facing similar challenges.
Researchers and students use DAC to present their recent findings, get feedback, explore channels to transfer/productize their technology and identify emerging challenges to influence their future research agenda. Students use DAC to find job opportunities and grow their global understanding of the industry. EDA exhibitors benefit by networking and selling themselves to these potential employees.
EDA, IP and design services companies, along with the leading foundries use DAC's exhibit floor to position themselves within the industry, to build the company image by showcasing their leaders and experts, and to set the discussion points in our industry.
Every year, hundreds of people representing all constituencies of electronic design serve on committees, ranging from the executive, exhibitor liaison and technical to panel, tutorial and other committees. Each volunteers their time, expertise and talent to make DAC the highest quality and the largest electronic design and automation conference.
DAC is a not-for-profit organization. Any operational surplus from the conference is divided equally and transferred to DAC's sponsors IEEE, ACM and EDAC. DAC revenues are collected from attendees, exhibitors and DAC's co-located events. By intent, registration fees have remained lower than similar conferences to allow everyone related to electronic design an opportunity to attend.
The coming 45th DAC is shaping up to be a strong conference, with plans for technical presentations from 639 regular papers submitted for consideration at an acceptance rate of 20%. Attendees can expect to see presentations on system-level design and co-design; physical design and manufacturing; power analysis and low power design; timing analysis and design for manufacturability (DFM); and verification. Within these areas, discussions will cover multicore, parallel software, security and electronic system level (ESL).
New this year are the Best of User Groups (BUGS) sessions, 14 new workshops and the co-location of MEMOCODE 2008 and NANOARCH 2008 and the adjunct event, the Global STC (Semiconductor Test Consortium) Conference.
The DAC exhibition floor will include more than 250 of the leading electronics design suppliers, including more than 11 new companies and the participation of the top three foundries TSMC, UMC and Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing. Every year, some companies choose not to participate. While Cadence Design Systems has canceled its contract for exhibit space, it - and all other companies across EDA, foundry, IP and design - is always welcome to exhibit this year or in 2009 when DAC will be in San Francisco.
As it serves so many constituencies in so many ways, DAC helps to set the agenda for the electronic design and design automation communities. No other venue provides such intense and rapid mixing of ideas, challenges and solutions to accelerate the advancement of electronic design. It takes an entire year to plan for the host of technical paper presentations, demonstrations of key new design technologies, panels, workshops and tutorials during this one special week. DAC is where the design automation and electronics design community join together to showcase technologies and talents that each year proves to the world the value of EDA.
Please join us in June in Anaheim, Calif., for an intensive week of learning and networking.
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