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Letters to the Editor -
***************************** ** Letter No. 1 ** Peggy, This is becoming a “must read” as soon as it hits my Outlook Inbox. I didn’t go to DATE, but your description made me feel that I had and heard the panels first hand. Thanks, Anon ***************************** ** Letter No. 2 ** Peggy, Loved the vicarious visit to DATE! However, the last thing that would come to anyone's mind in describing you is "aging dowager." Hope your knee is better by now. Best regards, Anon ***************************** ** Letter No. 3 ** Peggy, Completely agree about sending subs. At least [send] a courtesy announcement about it. I subscribe to a Yahoo group about help-authoring tools, and you should see what they thought about a certain company that didn’t even bother to staff their booth this year, although they sent materials in a box. Regards, Anon ***************************** ** Letter No. 4 ** Peggy, You probably don't want to print my name on this, but I checked last year's DAC exhibit list with this year's and what is published shows there are 25 fewer companies exhibiting at DAD than last year. There may be more startups exhibiting then ever before, but there are also 25 companies on last year's list that are not listed as coming this year. Last year had an increase of 12 over the 40th DAC, but this year seems to have a significant drop. And there are half a dozen companies on the current list that no longer exist. Regards, Anon ***************************** ** Letter No. 5 ** Peggy, I agree in principle with your opinion on the pending scaling-back of DAC by Cadence. While Gary Smith and I disagree over industry growth rates and drivers, I agree with him that this is a "high touch" sales and marketing industry. I believe that there are two primary reasons that Cadence is scaling back (and why Synopsys may actually go along with the change): 1) maturation of the EDA industry (the bigger problem that we are all dancing around) as the semiconductor industry itself matures, and 2) frustration at "funding" DAC for the up-and-coming startups that they have to acquire (sometimes at steep prices). Having been to DAC representing both a larger firm and a couple of smaller companies, it is abundantly clear to me that startups do indeed generate real "leads" at DAC/DATE etc., while the big companies seem to be going through the motions. So, there might be some competitive logic to the larger vendors marginalizing DAC and restricting the venue to SJC/SFO (captive customer audience gets diluted in Silicon Valley). If costs for DAC were the true motivation behind Cadence's scale-back, they could simply cut out some of the fancy parties and executive perks (taxi service from/to hotels is not really that shabby!). In any event, this development (and any follow-on moves by others) will certainly be a fun thing to monitor and critique, and provide fodder for gossip! Regards, Erach Desai ***************************** ** Letter No. 6 ** Hi Peggy, In your piece "Simplissimus" you offered 10 bucks to anyone who could name the author of several quotes. In the age of Google, it seemed to me to be a rather dangerous offer. It reminded me of one of your latest stories about high school kids getting essays off the web. I thought I'd try it! I took a small piece of one quote (democratic countries manners), surrounded with quote marks, and put it into Google. Piece of cake! Here were the results: Tocqueville: Book III Chapter XIV Democracy In America Alexis De Tocqueville I assume that Alexis De Tocqueville is the suspect. If true, I'll pass on the 10 bucks (in Euros). You can buy me a cup of coffee when our paths cross at the next EDA event. Regards, Bill Hoolhorst ***************************** ** Letter No. 7 ** Hello Peggy, I'm glad you managed to stay the course at DATE. Thank you so much for the helpful comments about trade show exhibiting in part one of your report - we shall be using yours and Gary's quotes to help encourage more exhibitors for the next DATE. I was mortified to read of your cutlery experiences. You are quite right that it's no subject for a dinner party conversation - in the course of hundreds of cross-Atlantic business (and pleasure) dinners I've never encountered anything like that. We are working hard on getting the Munich Messe to set up proper wireless access for next year - so we hope your next trip to DATE will be less arduous. In the meantime, please don't tar all of us Old Europeans with the same brush. Long live de Tocqueville's 'energetic and general technology'. With best regards, Jeremy Kenyon ***************************** ** Letter No. 8 ** Peggy, [The knife and fork at] 2:00? And all these years I was putting them at 3:00. (What an analog concept, by the way.) Regards, Anon ***************************** ** Letter No. 9 ** Peggy, Better and better every damn time! How was the back end of the trip? Regards, Anon ***************************** ** Letter No. 10 ** Dear Anon, We tried to be pretty thorough and saw in marked detail the Alte Pinakothek, the Neue Pinakothek, the Glyptothek, the Deutsches Museum, the Mullersches Volksbad (where we enjoyed a lovely glass of wine in a trendy spa setting), the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, the Stadtmuseum, the Residenz, the Neues Rathaus, and further afield – Linderhof, and Neuschwanstein (which we reached by bus). There was lots of snow in the first few days, so we had to dress warmly but we were prepared. We walked extensively, used the U and the S [the subways], and the streetcars. All told, we felt we got a good start in knowing Munich. An acquaintance in Munich, hearing of the details of our visit, advised us to come back in the summertime to fully enjoy the Englischer Garten Parc with the Isar River, and also the Munich beergarden lifestyle that's only available in warm weather.
We actually did see a small bit of the English Garden, including surfers who were riding "the wave" that emerges from a particularly large conduit connected to the canal system in the park. That was quite a sight! We found cheerful accommodations at Pension Seibel, which is just a block from the Viktualienmarkt. The 59 Euros per night included a private bathroom and a sumptuous breakfast that offered way more than we could eat on any particular morning. For food and drink, we were enamored of the beer halls and enjoyed The Hofbrauhaus, The Mariannenhof, and The Augustiner Keller – all within walking distance of the Marienplatz – where we drank beer with gusto, absolutely loved the pretzels, and enjoyed rich Bavarian fare. These places may be billed as tourist destinations, but I can assure you that hundreds of locals are there every night. The beer halls are loud, lively, and not to be missed! Meanwhile we quickly learned that in Munich, wine is best enjoyed at wine bars instead of at beer halls. The wine bar we particularly enjoyed was tucked into a corner of the rambling Residenz complex – Pfälzer Weinprobierstuben. In addition, we love fondue and found a delightful, sophisticated location where we enjoyed fondue and reclet at Weinhaus Schneider - Das Fondue Haus – also just a few blocks from the Marienplatz. All told, Munich is an extremely dynamic and accessible place – we walked the length and breadth of the old city repeatedly – although the 20th century history of the city can be difficult to deal with. The municipality suffered massive damage from Allied bombing during World War II, and there are photos in cathedrals and museums so visitors will never forget. The swaths of modern buildings interspersed with legacy architecture are hard to miss. Munich is a wonderful destination, but like so many places in the world – a visit there can cause one to face the realities of war and to examine one's own soul about the price of empire building, and the cost to those who push back – in any era. We also visited Dachau. The afternoon spent there defies description. My grandmother was 100 percent German, but born in the U.S. In visiting Dachau, one has to face the question of one's own courage. Would one have the strength of character to fight on behalf of a persecuted minority, if death to you and your loved ones was the only reward for resistance to institutionalized evil? For an American, a visit to Dachau also forces one to think about the much-venerated FDR, and his constituency, who orchestrated the internment of all persons of Japanese ancestry – be they citizens or no – who were rounded up and imprisoned in the U.S. for the duration of World War II. How was that behavior condoned in a 'free' society? Was it enough to say that we were at war? Regards, Peggy ***************************** ** Letter No. 11 ** Peggy, Re: "In Defense of Natural Language" Classical Taoism states that once man invented language he started separating himself from nature. The best description of anything is the thing itself. To bring this down to engineering terms, the ideal engineering environment is the classic try it and see if it works. (There is a great story, on PBS I think, about the great architect that developed the Gothic Cathedral. His most important building was the one that fell down. Fortunately, he was still hired to build another one and that was when he added the great Gothic arcs that supported all future Gothic cathedrals. There is also the story of the Egyptian pyramid that collapsed.) So, ideally we want an environment where the designer describes something and then produces a prototype of what he describes to see if it will actually work. Unfortunately, English doesn’t work that way. The environment we have now is one where an architect describes something, typically using words or a white board, and then a design engineer, two or three times removed, tries to decipher what he/she meant and starts building the prototype. This prototype (now in Verilog or VHDL) is again passed down two or three levels to an implementation engineer who then produces the first fairly useful prototype, which often the architect never sees. The process is so complicated that we have lost the “try it and see if it works” aspect of engineering. Innovation is racing ahead of design. This is why we are trying to raise the level of abstraction. We desperately need to have our design work done as close to, if not specifically by, the system architect. That means we need to have that first fairly useful prototype available at the ES Level, which in turn means it has to be around 30% accurate to the performance of the finished product. And you find that out by using a simulator.
So our challenge is to develop an English/Hebrew/ Chinese/French/Japanese/German … language simulator “or” develop a simulatable language that is “good enough for government work.” Regards, Gary Smith ***************************** ** Letter No. 12 ** Peggy, The link still goes to the guy drinking beer! Is that supposed to happen? Anon [Editor's Note: The link has been fixed.] ***************************** ** Letter No. 13 ** Peggy, My son says, "Those look like Coronas to me." Anon [Editor's Note: They are!] *****************************
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