Your DAC dance card should be filling up, but first ...

** SDForum Distinguished Speaker Series – This month's event is on the evening of June 8th and highlights John Markoff who will speak on his new book, "What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry." Markoff is a Staff Technology Writer for The New York Times. After John's talk, there will be a panel discussion including Dennis Allison, Bill Duvall, Lee Felsenstein, and Larry Tesler. Per usual, the SDForum will meet at the PARC Auditorium on the Xerox campus in Palo Alto.

** DAC 2005 **

It's the 42nd Annual DAC
June 13th to the 17th
Anaheim Convention Center

Here's some additional meetings to add to your calendar:

X Initiative Breakfast
Tuesday, June 14th at 7:30 AM
Anaheim Convention Center, Ballroom D

Accellera Breakfast and Panel
Design & Verification: Can the Analog/Mixed-Signal Standard Bridge the Chasm?
Wednesday, June 15th from 7:30 AM to 9:00 AM
Anaheim Hilton, Capistrano A

Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2) Library Meeting
Wednesday, June 15th at 10 AM
Anaheim Convention Center, Room 202A

Accellera's Open Member Meeting
Wednesday, June 15, 2005 from 10 AM to 11:30 AM
Anaheim Hilton, Capistrano B

Open OVL Technical Committee Meeting
Wednesday, June 15th from 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM
Anaheim Hilton, Capistrano B

Meamwhile, don't forget Management Day at DAC on Tuesday, June 14, 2005. Organizers say, this is "the only event where you'll hear first-hand how managers from companies like Cisco, eSilicon, Freescale, Intel, Philips, and PMC-Sierra made crucial design-business decisions. The day includes the EDA Business Forum Luncheon and an exclusive cocktail party.

Here's the Big Picture at DAC 2005:

"Electronic design has never been easy. And with today's growing technical challenges, customer expectations, and competitive pressures, it's not getting any easier. That's why more than 10,000 electronic designers, engineers, researchers, managers, and exhibitors will be coming to the 42nd Design Automation Conference. They're looking for the edge they need to make their best efforts better. The edge they find only when they learn about the latest in design methodologies and tool development, make valuable contacts, and hear exhilarating ideas from the industry's best thinkers. The edge they get only at the industry's largest, most diverse, most important annual gathering."

This year's program includes the following topic areas. In each area, sessions will cover aspects of both design methodology and design tools:

* Business - especially "Management Day" on Tuesday
* Design for Manufacturing
* Embedded Systems
* Logic Design & Test
* Nanometer Analysis and Simulation
* Physical Circuit Design
* Power
* System-Level Design and Verification
* Wireless - especially "Wireless Wednesday"

The DAC 2005 keynote speakers will include:

Bernard Meyerson, IBM Fellow and Vice President and Chief Technologist for the Systems and Technology Group at IBM will discuss: "How Does One Define "Technology" Now That Classical Scaling Is Dead (and Has Been for Years)?" on Tuesday morning.

Ronald Rohrer, Corporate Vice President for Advanced Research and Development at Cadence Design Systems will address: "Innovation in the EDA Business Need Not Be an Oxymoron" on Thursday afternoon.

The DAC Pavillion will include 18 panels and presentations on the exhibit floor. The DAC Pavilion sessions are open to all attendees and feature technical, business and strategy discussions.

In addition there will be full-day tutorials on Monday and Friday for more discussions of technical topics.

Finally, the Workshop for Women in Design Automation (WWINDA) will take place on Monday afternoon.

** Semicon West 2005 – You'll want to book your trip to San Francico and San Jose right now, so you don't miss a bit of the biggest semiconductor celebration on the face of the planet. It's happening this year from July 12 to July 17th. As you know, the front end of the manufacturing process will be showcased at Moscone Center in the first half of the week, and the back end of the process will be showcased at the San Jose Convention Center in the second half of the week. Don't even pretend to claim you're in any sector of the semiconductor industry unless you're absolutely planning on coming to the front end or the back end of this mega-event.

** 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."

** 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!

** CDNLive! Silicon Valley – This conference will be hosted by the new Cadence User Group, "The Cadence Designer Network," and will be taking place September 12th to the 14th. Organizers say this is a "customer-driven technical forum that gives you the opportunity to interact with other designers-and with the Cadence engineers who develop the technologies you use." You should probably registering now and entering it into your calendar in ink.

** 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 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.

** IMEC CALIT International School Events – IMEC has announced their new Center for Advanced Learning in Information Technologies (CALIT) as a platform for high-level events and training programs that focus on visionary and interdisciplinary themes. Here are som events you might consider attending in Leuven, Belgium:

The first two meetings took place in May. The third symposium, scheduled for September 1st, will address the convergence of nanometer-scale sciences and the methods needed to bridge the gap between manmade and biological systems through nanotechnology. At this event, experts will discuss what can be realistically expected from this convergence and how society should prepare for the impact of this new technology.

** 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.

** 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."

** ICCAD-2005 will 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."