I arrived at DAC yesterday, just in time for the EDAC reception and the customary opening talk from Gary Smith EDA. The EDAC reception was packed, with many people in good moods wanting to talk socially, or in a business manner. I didn’t manage to get more than a few feet into the room before people were stopping me to talk. I took almost ½ hour before I managed to get to the bar for a drink and then over to what seemed to – an all vegetarian nibbles table. Good for who ever made that decision. I am not a vegetarian, but there is no reason to alienate those that are with very non-descript things.

So, while I could have chatted there for hours, it was time to hear what Gary Smith had to say next door. The problem was that the food and drink continued in the next room and most people were quite happy with that rather than coming to hear Gary. Gary really had two messages. The first was that 3D is getting exciting – to him, but not really to me, just because it is not a field that I cover. Then he did his more traditional talk about rising costs of chips, the things necessary to bring it down etc. He made a few interesting remarks. First that power modeling and simulation is becoming a must have capability, second that SW costs will be $79M in 2012 and that the problem Cadence had was that they were targeting the upper mainstream users and recently the amount they spend on EDA has fallen below the amount spent by the power users. Back to the System Level Virtual Prototypes. He says they must run at 100MHz + and be tightly integrated with the SW development tools. No real surprise there.

He finished with a conclusion that I have to take exception to though. He said “We need major innovation in SW tools and methodologies to keep Moore’s Law on track.” What have the SW tools got to do with the rate of increase in chip complexity? I do not believe that they are coupled. Chip complexity is about adding cores, adding capabilities. Sure these are available to the SW in many cases, but more SW engineers can be put on that task. So not sure what he is getting at. Perhaps I will get a chance to pick his brains on that.

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Brian Bailey – keeping you covered