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An Editor's note

In my article on DATE 2006 published in EDA Weekly, I failed to specifically acknowledge the efforts of EDAC's Bob Gardner and Jennifer Meola. The two of them were hard at work round the clock for the entire conference, in particular managing the EDAC Exhibition Hall Pavilion. They made that entire event move like clockwork. Anyone involved in the panels mounted there -- and there were many panels – knows how professionally Bob and Jennifer handled the program.

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Regarding the results of your survey on Women in EDA. Will I be standing alone as a woman who thinks the industry is open and just fine for women?

Regards,

Anon

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I'd like to add some comments to this discussion on women in EDA. Though I'm not in the subject minority, I do feel like I have some standing to comment:

1) I married a professional women (a doctor), and lived through her struggles with gender discrimination through medical school, residency, and subsequent 25-year career.

2) I have a daughter (my only child) who, despite an intuitive grasp of calculus that is much better than mine, chose to pursue a career as a jockey.

3) My wife and I funded a scholarship at the University of Michigan for women students in engineering and science.

4) I have worked with a few women in EDA, including two Ph.D. engineers and a very bright freshman summer intern last year who worked under my direction (the intern, that is – Ph.D. engineers don't work under anyone's direction).

Here are my answers to your survey –

1) It would be better not to even discuss the topic of Women in EDA in a public forum:

No. The lack of women in engineering professions is a real problem that deserves to be addressed.

2) Women in EDA:

Adequately represented - compared to women electrical engineers. The proportion is probably comparable, though I don't know that for sure. Not adequately represented compared to the proportion of women in computer science. However, computer scientists are not adequately represented in EDA, either.

Hardly represented at all – in absolute terms.

3) Advancement opportunities for Women in EDA:

Excellent – I may not have a very broad view of the overall EDA situation, but at least in start-ups, I think women have as good a chance, or better, than anyone. Our current VP of sales is a woman, and she gets treated just like any other vp of sales, with just as much respect (or lack thereof). I had a woman who was my VP of marketing at my first company, and she was widely respected. She chose to take time off after her second child was born, and that effectively took her out of the industry for about 8 years. Doing that makes it difficult to advance your career, but she has come back and is resuming where she left off. Men don't do that too often in EDA, but a lot of guys left during the .com bubble only to return a couple of years later. Her situation is not all that different from theirs. Ultimately, you do a good job, people in a start-up see it. Start-ups (at least ones that succeed) can't afford to be anything other than a meritocracy.

There is another aspect of gender-awareness that I think too many women discount. That is, just as there are advantages to being male, there are advantages to being female that it's perfectly alright to exploit. It's not a coincidence that so many of the best PR people in the industry are women. If you are a male engineer (or analyst or editor), you'd much rather talk to a pleasant female voice on the phone than a pushy male. I've never been able to convince my daughter that a woman should take advantage of being feminine when the opportunity presents itself. The goal shouldn't be to be just like a man, the goal should be to succeed at what you are trying to do.

4) Why there are fewer Women in EDA than one would like:

Too few women pursuing technical degrees
Too few women pursuing degrees in electrical engineering
Too few women pursuing degrees in computer science
Women think EDA looks dull
Women think other careers would be more lucrative
EDA is an Old Boys Network

All of the above, except "EDA is an Old Boys Network." I don't think it is.

5) Does the term "Women in EDA" refer to:

Women who do software development for CAD tools
Women who do sales in EDA
Women who do marketing/PR in EDA
Women who are in management in EDA
Women who serve in other capacities in the industry

I believe all of the above.

Regards,

John Sanguinetti

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Hey there Peggy,

Since I didn¹t see you Tuesday morning at the opening management forum panel on engineering education in the U.S. at DesignCon, I thought you might appreciate a synopsis of some of the more interesting points made.

In between the politicizing by panelists Carl Guardino, president of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, and Timothy Saponas, worldwide higher education manager at Intel, Belle Wei, the dean of engineering at SJSU, offered some insightful remarks. There seems to be a great deal of misinformation out there that has resulted in declining enrollment in electrical engineering programs at San Jose State University.

Wei said that the students just don¹t believe that there are jobs waiting for them in EE. She believes this is due, in part, to the fact that the media doesn¹t report the fact that companies like Yahoo & Google can¹t hire enough engineers. She said, "the news is all about companies moving jobs overseas." So all the outsourcing hype has led to an increase in mechanical engineering as opposed to electrical.

This is a problem that we may be generations away from feeling, as it¹s the electrical engineers that are responsible for Silicon Valley¹s glory. She pointed out that, "Google, Ebay, Yahoo were all started out by engineers, and that they are wealth creators."

Wei also alluded to the laziness of American students. A program sponsored by SJSU that takes 25 engineering students to China annually during summer break serves as a real eye opener. Wei said, "they see that the competition is real." Apparently Chinese students take an average course-load of seven classes per semester, whereas American students consider four classes a full boat. Also, Chinese students plan on attaining master's degrees in order to better compete – and American students on the whole, want to join the workforce immediately after earning their bachelor's degrees. Bottom line is our kids lack the drive & motivation.

Jim Hogan, private investor, formerly of Telos Venture Partners, made the point that these kids need a hook – something tangible to get them inspired. For him it was the NASA project, a brief interlude as an intern at NASA & he was hooked. He offered a timely suggestion, "I love the idea of an alternative energy program because it reminds me of computing in the late 1970¹s."

Wei agreed with this notion that capturing the imagination of the youth is necessary to inspire them, and that she had "been thinking of something like solar-powered cars."

At any rate, after having sat through this hour plus debate one can¹t help but be a little concerned about our tenuous grasp as an industry leader and wonder at what the future will bring. Any thoughts?

Regards,

Amy Battrell
Lee Public Relations

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Re: John Cooley's DVCon Panel

Start-ups are delivering some of the most advanced solutions to a design community desperate for answers to their most pressing problems. EDA giants continue to "give away" their sub-optimal solutions and call it "delivering a product mix", but start-ups are truly delivering where it matters most while having to fight the battle of competing with "free" tools.

Regards,

Anon

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I attended the EDA stagnation panel yesterday at DesignCon. A couple of good points were brought up and it raised some questions for me? I'd be interested in getting your take on this and what your readers think. It seems that the panelists and audience were evenly split on whether or not EDA was stagnating. Is this even split a fair indication of how the EDA vendor world thinks about the economic health of EDA?

One of the panelists brought up a good point: that EDA companies undercut the value of their tools by selling them for a low price in order to land customers. A former semiconductor executive, he said that he remembers EDA vendors coming in and quoting a low price, just to get the business. Then he said that if EDA vendors wanted to sell their tools cheap, he'd buy them cheap! This panelist suggested that EDA vendors needed to hold the price line so that prices reflected the value of the tools.

Should – and can – the EDA industry hold the line on pricing in order to see increase in profits? Is this realistic or just conceptually the right idea? Could this be one reason why the EDA industry seems to be stagnating?

Is there any other way for small EDA companies to compete with the big guys who bundle their products and give the tools away for free or the FPGA guys who give away their tools for free in exchange for selling silicon?

Even though smaller EDA companies have better tools, are they getting frozen out of the market?

Thanks,

Debbie McDermott
Lee Public Relations

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Peggy:

To Debbie McDermott's point (see above):

I do recognize that the implementation and verification vendors are fighting over market share and that pricing is a factor in that fight. But there's stagnation in terms of revenue and, separately, in terms of technical innovation. It's my belief that those vendors who concentrate the most effort on the latter will win out even if their prices are higher. Maybe this one's tools are cheaper than that one's tools, but in the end, if the quality of results aren't there, what did you save yourself by buying less expensive but less capable tools? A fabless house may be staking its very existence on its EDA purchases. Their decisions cannot rest on price alone.

Regards,

David Maliniak
EDA Technology Editor
Electronic Design

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I LOVED Erach Desai's open letter. Great that there's a place for this sort of discussion to run!

Regards,

Anon

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Is the picture in the New Zealand report one of Freddy Santamaria's? It's awesome.

Regards,

Anon

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Hi Peggy,

A comment: [Some people] like to read things in print and your web page doesn't print well. Do you have plans to make it more printer-friendly? [That would] strongly increases the chances of [those people] reading it.

Cheers,

Anon

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Peggy Aycinena owns and operates EDA Confidential. She can be reached at peggy@aycinena.com

Copyright (c) 2006, Peggy Aycinena. All rights reserved.