** WESCON – The conference has arrived. Organizers say the speakers at the Santa Clara Convention Center from April 12th to the 14th will include: Mentor Graphics' Henry Potts, PDF Solutions' Andrzej Strojwas, Test & Measurement World's Rick Nelson, Si2's Steve Schulz, IBM's Kevin Roche, Array Communications' Martin Cooper, and Step Communications Arthur Astrin. There will be lots of discussion about DFM, DFY, and other matters related to manufacturing and design. It's going to be a "Be There" couple of days, so don't miss it!

** SIGMA-C GmbH Users Group – The company's Japan User Group meeting will take place in the JETRO IBSC Hall in the Ark Mori Building in Tokyo on April 12 and will include a company update, product roadmaps, and presentations by Canon, Nikon, IMEC and InterSystems Japan Corp. A reception will follows in the ANA Hotel.

** The 6th OpenAccess Conference – The conference will take place on April 18th and is sponsored by the Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2). It's going to be at the DoubleTree Hotel in San Jose.

Per the Press Release: "As the new OpenAccess 2.2 Release proliferates into the end-user and EDA communities, new applications and capabilities are being released which capitalize on the enhancements and strengths of this new OpenAccess version. This conference will highlight many of these new applications, and the features and value proposition that these new tools present to end-users and developers. The all-day event will be followed by a Partners Pavilion where live demos of OpenAccess applications will be seen."

** ICCAD-2005 is inviting you to submit a paper to their upcoming 2005 conference, to be held at the DoubleTree Hotel in San Jose from November 6th to the 10th. This is one of the 'real' conferences – real engineering, real science, real stuff. Please note that organizers say that this year, "in addition to traditional CAD topics, ICCAD has expanded its focus to include innovative design technologies for devices, circuits, and systems." Anyway, there are a bunch of categories as always, so you should be thinking about participating. However, no matter which topic you decide to weigh in on, the deadline for submissions is 5 PM on April 20th. So hurry!

** SDForum Distinguished Speaker Series – This month's speaker on the evening of April 21st is Bruce Perens, Senior Scientist for Open Source at Cyber Security Policy Research Laboratory, George Washington University. Perens is described as "a seminal figure in the open source movement. Indeed, he helped coin the very term 'Open Source,' and wrote the original Open Source Definition."

The title of Perens' talk is: "The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source." Per the organizers: "In this talk, Perens will consider the economics of Open Source. Says Perens: "Many people don't understand how Open Source could be sustainable, some may even feel that its effect upon the proprietary software industry is an economic detriment. Fortunately, if you look more deeply into the economic function of software in general, it's easy to establish that Open Source is both sustainable and of tremendous benefit to the overall economy. Open Source can be explained entirely within the context of conventional open-market economics. Indeed, it turns out that it has much stronger ties to the phenomenon of capitalism than you may have appreciated."

Per usual, the SDForum will meet at the PARC Auditorium on the Xerox campus in Palo Alto.

** TSMC U.S. Technology Symposium – Organizers say the event will take place on April 26 at the San Jose Convention Center. The symposium is scheduled to "highlight state-of-the art semiconductor technology and services that benefit leading Silicon Valley semiconductor companies. This year, TSMC proudly features Mike Melvill, pilot of the first commercially funded spaceflight, as the keynote speaker."

** Mentor Graphics User2User Conference – This will be the 21st annual Mentor Graphics Users' Conference, and it's happening April 27th to 29th in Santa Clara, CA.

The company says, "The event will feature two keynote speakers. Aviation pioneer Burt Rutan, chief designer of SpaceShipOne, the world's first private manned spacecraft, will present the first keynote. SpaceShipOne earned the $10 million Ansari X-Prize for its two successful launches into space within a 14-day time frame. The second keynote speaker will be Michael Sander of NASA's JPL. Sander leads the JPL efforts in support of the new NASA Exploration Initiative. In addition, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman of the Discovery Channel's MythBusters will also make an appearance."

** Denali MemCon 2005 – Organizers say this is "the industry's premier event for leading-edge trends in the business and technology of semiconductor memory, storage, and chip-to-chip communications." Each event includes keynotes, panel discussions, and more. Upcoming dates include MemCon Austin on April 28th at the Barton Creek Resort in Austin, TX, MemCon Tokyo on September 15th and 16th at the Tokyo Conference Center, and MemCon San Jose on October 12th and 13th at the Westin Santa Clara.

** Accellera invites Nominations – Per organizers: "You are invited to nominate an individual for the second annual Accellera Technical Excellence Award. This award recognizes major contributions to the development of standards in Accellera. Examples of such contributions may include leadership in standardization of new technologies, assuring achievement of standards development goals, identifying opportunities to better serve the needs of the industry through standards. Accellera wishes to recognize the outstanding achievements of its technical committee members. This will be done by selecting contributors to the Accellera standards development process. Please send your nomination by April 30th to: Victor Berman, Chair of the Accellera Awards Committee, email: award@accellera.org The award will be announced on June 15th."

** 2005 EDA Tech Forum - Mentor Graphics, as well as Altera, Artisan/ARM, Chartered Semiconductor, The Mathworks, VSIA, and Accellera will be sponsoring this series of conferences in the coming months. Organizers say that each conference will include: "Technical sessions and hands-on self-paced workshops [that] address real-life design issues in IC nanometer design, functional verification, integrated system design, and emerging technologies, with presenters from [sponsoring] companies." All told, 18 conferences are scheduled for various venues worldwide in 2005 including: Dallas, Texas; Phoenix, Boston, San Jose, Ottawa, Dresden, Reading, Paris, Penang, Bangalore, Delhi, Beijing, Shanghai, Hsinchu, Seoul, Tokyo, and Kyoto." Oh my - get out that atlas!

** SAME 2005 is inviting you to submit a paper to their upcoming 2005 conference, to be held in the Science Technological Park of Sophia Antipolis, France on October 5th and 6th. Organizers says this year, the main topic for the forum will be System in Package & System on Chip. Of course there are other categories as well, so you should be checking out the website and figuring out where to position your work. Deadline for submissions in May 2nd. Hurry!

** EDAC Spring Members Meeting – The event will be held on Wednesday, May 4th, at the Sunnyvale headquarters of AMD. The evening's panel is titled, "Shaking Things Up in the Electronic Design Business" and will include CoWare's Alan Naumann, MontaVista Software's Jim Ready, PDF Solutions' Dave Joseph, and Synplicity's Gary Meyers. The panel will be moderated by everybody's favorite VC, Lucio Lanza of Lanza TechVentures' fame. The 5 men intend to "share their views on the business models, licensing models, and technologies that could generate seismic shifts in EDA. Each panelist will describe what his company is doing to 'shake things up,' the decisions and events that led his business to where it is today – and lessons learned along the way – as well as strategies for market success. You won't want to miss this chance to gain new insights on where today's innovative companies see opportunities for business and industry growth."

** DAC 2005 – Please put the conference on your calendar right now:

June 13th to the 17th
Anaheim Convention Center

And don't forget: "DAC is the annual event where the electronics design community meets for a week-long forum of information exchange on management practices, products, methodologies and processes. Attended by more than 12,000 developers, designers, researchers, managers and engineers from leading electronics companies and universities worldwide, it offers a robust technical program covering the industry’s hottest trends. Its vibrant exhibit floor includes more than 200 companies, many of whom are startups just introducing their first products. The conference is sponsored by ACM’s Special Interest Group on Design Automation, the Circuits and Systems Society and Computer Aided Network Design Technical Committee of the IEEE, and EDAC."

** HOT Chips 17 – The upcoming conference on August 14th to 16th will be held once again on the lovely campus of Stanford University.

Conference organizers say: "Since it started in 1989, HOT Chips has been known as one of the semiconductor industry's leading conference on high-performance microprocessors and related integrated circuits. The conference is held once a year in August on the Stanford University campus in the center of the world's capital of electronics activity, Silicon Valley. The conference emphasis this year, as in previous years, is on real products and realizable technology."

** ISoC – The 3rd International System-on-Chip Conference and Exhibition will be held November 1st and 2nd in Newport Beach, CA. Deadline for paper submissions has been changed to April 2nd. Organizers say the theme for the conference will be "SoC in Wireless Applications." They also say, "Track & Session presenters, keynote speakers, and panel members who can contribute their professional expertise have a wonderful opportunity to share their innovative SoC technology/products at this event with a very focused and targeted audience."