February and March hail the Magnificent Seven –
* DesignCon,
* ISSCC,
* DVCon,
* ESC,
* DATE,
* PCB West,
* and ISQED.
Can you make it to them all?

** DesignCon 2005 – The conference is happening January 31st through February 4th at the Santa Clara Convention Center. This year EDA is front and center at DesignCon as the three keynoters are the CEOs of the largest EDA companies – Synopsys' Aart de Geus, Mentor Graphic's Wally Rhines, and Cadence's Mike Fister.

Dr. de Geus will review the technological and economic pressures occurring in the electronics industry today – including the impact of globalization – and he will talk about the various, special pressures on semiconductor design. He will note that today's design challenges break down into a number of specific, but interdependent areas, all of which have an impact on QOR (quality of results), TTR (time to results), and COR (cost of results). In particular, Dr. de Geus will focus on COR, and yield; physical implementation must be handled in a single, convergent environment. It must be able to address timing closure, low power design, and yield, while offering high QoR, TTR and CoR. This keynote address will indicate that the key to dealing successfully with these separate, but interdependent challenges, lies in employing a systemic solution that takes all of them into account.

Dr. Rhines will discuss the reasons why – although 100 million gates at 130 namometers and 90 nanometers are now a reality – the design industry seems to be holding back from embracing those realities. Dr. Rhines will explain why that situation will change going forward, and he will also detail the innovations in EDA technology that will ultimately enable cost-effective SoCs with gate counts in the tens of millions.

The topic of Mr. Fister's talk is still under wraps as his company is in an SEC-mandated quiet period until the company reports its earnings on February 3rd.

DesignCon is always a must-attend event, evidenced by a recent letter from Brian Bailey which noted that, in addition to the traditional focus on high-speed boards, interconnect, and packaging: "DesignCon is also emerging as one of the top functional verification conferences. Unlike most conferences, DesignCon is meant for engineers. The papers are given by engineers, and the industry technologists with real world experiences that they wish to share with other engineers."

Finally, keep in mind the 2-day DesignCon Executive Forum while planning your schedule for the show:

February 1st – Noon to 12:30 PM
Keynote – Aart de Geus, Synopsys

February 1st – 2:00 pm to 3:15 PM
Panel: "Enabling Innovation on Today’s Design Teams"
Chair: Colin Shepard, Tektronix

February 1st – 3:45 PM to 5:00 PM
Panel: "The Power to Innovate: What Critical Links in the Design Chain Can Make or Break a Power-Efficient Design?"
Chair: Gary Smith, Gartner Dataquest

February 2nd – 9:00 AM to 10:20 AM
Panel: "Simplifying the Future: The Business Impact of Electronic System-Level Design"
Chair: Mark Milligan, OSCI

February 2nd – 10:30 AM to 11:45 AM
Panel: "Design Verification: From Specification to Closure"
Chair: Sergio Camerlo, Cisco Systems

February 2nd – Noon to 12:30 PM
Keynote – Wally Rhines, Mentor Graphics

February 2nd – 2:00 PM to 3:15 PM
Panel: "Leadership in Times of Change: Sourcing Skills Differently – Why, What, and How"
Chair: Steve Warntjes, Agilent Technologies

February 2nd – 3:45 PM to 5:00 PM
Pamel: "What Is Design for Yield and How Do We Get There?"
Chair: Gabe Moretti, EDN Magazine

** IEEE ISSCC 2005 – The International Solid-State Circuits Conference, as the companion conference to IEDM, is described by the organizers as "the foremost global forum for presentation of advances in solid-state circuits and Systems-on-a-Chip. The Conference offers a unique opportunity for engineers working at the cutting edge of IC design to maintain technical currency, and to network with leading experts."

ISSCC is taking place from February 6th to 10th at the San Francisco Marriott Hotel. If you're working at the cutting edge, attendance should be required.

** DVCon 2005 – Organizers says the conference, which is taking place February 14th to 16th at the DoubleTree Inn in San Jose, will include valuable information for design and verification engineers, EDA professionals, university researchers, and industry leaders.

Program highlights will include a keynote from Mentor Graphics CEO Wally Rhines, and four sponsored tutorials covering:

* "SystemVerilog Assertions: Best Practices for Functional Verification" – sponsored by Synopsys
* "Pragmatic ABV: Effective Assertion-Based Verification" – sponsored by Cadence
* "Transitioning to SystemVerilog for Verification" – sponsored by Mentor Graphics
* "Transaction-Level Modeling with the New OSCI SystemC TLM Standard" – also sponsored by Cadence

Meanwhile, nobody's going to miss the John Cooley's Panel of Executives chatting about every little thing on Tuesday, the 15th ... an event that always turns out to be the social event of the season.

** DAC 2005 Nominations – With an eye to DAC 2005, nominations are being accepted up until March 4th for the Marie R. Pistilli Women in EDA Achievement Award. The DAC Committee says this yearly tribute recognizes individuals who have visibly helped advance women in the EDA industry.

Per the Press Release: "To be considered, the nominee should show leadership for the launch of a successful product that included contributions from women or a program that has created opportunities for women. Or, the nominee could be the leader of a company or organization that has helped raise the awareness of women or has been a mentor or role model for successful women. The award, named for the former organizer of the DAC is open to both males and females with technical or non-technical backgrounds in industry or academia. Last year's winner was Dr. Mary Jane Irwin who holds the title of the A. Robert Noll chair in the Department of Computer Science at Pennsylvania State University."

** ESC 2005 – The organizers of the Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco say this is the 17th annual event, and is taking place March 6th to 10th. The conference is described as "the largest systems design event in North Emerica. ESC San Francisco is one of the few places that bring players in the electronics systems design industry together with the newest technologies." Moscone Center will be buzzing with the usual mega-crowds. You'll probably want to get there.

** EDN Magazine's 15th Annual Innovation Awards – The Innovation Awards ceremony and dinner will be held March 7th at the historic Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Organizers say that Geoffrey Orsak, Dean of Southern Methodist University School of Engineering, and Walter Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal's personal-technology columnist will be the featured speakers.

** DATE 2005 - Organizers describe the conference – this year taking place in Munich on March 7th to 11th as "Europe's premier conference and exhibition for Electronic Design, Automation and Test offers delegates and visitors the broadest-ever range of information to system designers. The conference addresses research and development activities in the field of design technology and is more and more moving to a system design event focusing on common platform challenges for embedded systems."

The conference will include 400+ presentations, 234 technical conference presentations in seven parallel conference tracks and others in the Executive Track, pre-conference tutorials on the first day, and workshop sessions on the last day of the conference, special days devloted to automotive system design, a PCB symposium, and an enhanced Designers Forum. In addition, organizers say a new feature this year is a 3-day track of submitted papers on Embedded Software.

** PCB West 2005 - The conference is taking place March 7th to 11th at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Organizers say, "The PCB Design Conferences are the first and only PCB design-oriented conferences developed specifically to meet the needs of PCB engineering, design and manufacture professionals. Our conferences may have been imitated, but they have never been equaled or surpassed. Since 1992, PCB Design Conference West has been expanding the limits of PCB design by providing attendees with quality technical education taught by industry experts, a top-notch product and service exhibition and a wide range of networking opportunities."

This year's keynote is titled: "The Future of the North American PCB Industry." If you think you've got a part in that future, you should be attending the conference.

** ISQED 2005 - This will be the 6th International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design, and will be happening March 21st to 23rd in San Jose. The topic of this year's meeting will be "Design for Quality in the Era of Uncertainty."

Organizers say the conference is "held in technical sponsorship of IEEE EDS, IEEE CPMT, and in cooperation with IEEE CASS, ACM/sigDA. ISQED is the pioneer and leading conference dealing with design for manufacturability and quality issues, front to back. The ISQED'05 conference spans three days, Monday through Wednesday, in three parallel tracks, hosting near 100 technical presentations, six keynote speakers, two panel discussions, workshops /tutorials and other informal meetings."

** DAC 2005 – Speaking of the Design Automation Conference, please get it on your calendars now, in ink:

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."

You and I know, we'll all be there!