The focus continues on a few of the upcoming events at DAC 2004, June 7th to the 11th in and around the San Diego Convention Center. Not surprisingly, there’s lots more information about the week’s events and the opportunity to register at www.dac.com.

The SPIRIT Consortium Technology Announcement and Panel Discussion will takes place on Tuesday, June 8th, also over lunch. The panel will address "Increasing efficiency in SoC design integration, configuration and tooling" and will be moderated by SemiView’s Jim Lipman. Consortium members will serve as panel participants. Consortium Vice President Chris Lennard of ARM Ltd. will be making a presentation as well. Lunch is included. (www.spiritconsortium.com)

Meanwhile, remember that "SPIRIT stands for Structure for Packaging, Integrating and Re-using IP within Tool-flows. Announced last year at DAC 2003, the SPIRIT Consortium is a standardization body formed to increase efficiency of SoC integration by defining new standards in tooling in EDA environments. The SPIRIT standards will be built upon and extend the capabilities of existing tool flows and IP packaging techniques and standards. The major standardization focus is to: 1) enable the use of IP and tools from multiple sources irrespective of their original packaging by means of meta data and, 2) allow mechanisms for expanding and integrating the IP as well as slotting in of tools from multiple vendors into a standard framework."

The EDA Business Forum at DAC - This 8th annual event and will also be taking place on Tuesday, June 8th, at noon, also in the Convention Center. D.A. Davidson & Co.’s Michael Black will be your host and, along with your lunch, you can enjoy a presentation by EETimes’ Brian Fuller, and a panel discussion including Synopsys’ Aart de Geus, D.A.Davidson’s Bill Frerichs, and PDF Solutions’ John Kibarian. (www.edac.org)

SystemC Technology Symposium - This event also includes lunch, but it’s taking place on Monday, the 7th, in the Convention Center. Dataquest’s Gary Smith will be moderating a panel of industry luminaries. Discussion will center on advancements in SystemC, a SystemC roadmap, IEEE standardization, SystemC and SystemVerilog, SystemC in Japan, modeling a complete system with OCP SystemC transactions, and using TLM for SoC production designs. That’s a lot to cover in just 90 minutes, so it should be fun to watch it unfold. (www.dac.com)

The Workshop for Women in Design Automation - Plan on attending this year’s WWINDA at DAC in San Diego. The workshop will get underway on Monday, June 7th, at 1 PM in the convention center and will run the bulk of the afternoon. This year’s keynote speaker will be Dr. Duy-Loan Le, Senior Fellow at Texas Instruments. Le will deliver a talk - "Career and Life Drivers; Passion versus Ambition" - which will offer suggestions to help people maintain their focus and balance amidst the demands of work, family, and community. Undoubtedly as in years past, the keynote and afternoon’s panel discussion will be informative for the many people who come to share their career triumphs and tribulations. As always, both men and women are welcome to attend. (www.dac.com)