April comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamb ...

** Synopsys 15th EDA Interoperability Developers' Forum – The conference is happening on April 7th at the Sun Conference Center in Santa Clara. The keynote will be given by ARM's Mark Templeton and will cover: "The Value of Interoperability." Also of interest is the panel discussion: "Interoperability: Does It Pay to Play Nice? (or Do Nice Guys Finish Last?)" The panel will be moderated by Jasper Design's Kathryn Kranen. The day includes a free breakfast and lunch – Synopsys' Rich Goldman will be speaking just after breakfast, and others representing viewpoints from Sun, Open Access, IEEE SystemVerilog, EDAC, Aldec, Willamette HDL, EVE, and Fishtail will also be presenting during the day. You should plan to attend!

** ISPD ... The International Symposium on Physical Design – Organizers say the meeting provides "a high-quality forum for the exchange of ideas and results in critical areas related to the physical design of VLSI systems. The scope of this symposium includes all aspects of physical design, from interactions with behavior- and logic-level synthesis, to back-end performance analysis and verification. The symposium is sponsored by ACM/SIGDA with technical co-sponsorship from the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. Financial support has been provided by Cadence, Golden Gate, IBM, Intel, Magma, Mentor Graphics, Sierra, and Synopsys."

It's all happening this year at The Marines' Memorial Club & Hotel in San Francisco from April 3rd to 6th, and you should know it's being co-located with SLIP 2005.

** 2005 Electronic Design Process Symposium – Meanwhile, watch out! Organizers say this event is "fast approaching."

This year things will focus on design flows that support SuperSize designs – does that come with fries? – and the related DFM issues. The symposium is on April 7th and 8th in Monterey, immediately after ISPD (see above). The keynote speaker will be IBM's John Darringer and dinner attendees will hear Greg Spirakis, "recently of Intel." The Symposium General Chair is Dwight Hill of Synopsys and the Program Chair is John Lillis of the University of Illinois.

** WESCON – Nobody should have to tell you what Wescon is all about, it's been around that long. Nonetheless, you should know that speakers at the Santa Clara Convention Center from April 12th to the 14th will include: Mentor Graphics' Henry Potts, PDF Solutions' Andrzej Strojwas, Tets & Measurement World's Rick Nelson, Si2's Steve Schulz, IBM's Kevin Roche, Array Communications' Martin Cooper, and Step Communications Arthur Astrin. It's going to be a "Be There" couple of days, so don't miss it!

** 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."

** 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, 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, 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 conferences 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!

** 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. 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."