Gary Smith EDA (GSEDA) is the leading provider of market intelligence and advisory services for the global Electronic Design Automation (EDA), Electronic System Level (ESL) design, and related technology markets.
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"DATE
2009" |
DATE 2009
- Probably the most horrible thing about DATE 2009 was
that there were not nearly as many competitors visiting
your booth this year. EDA vendor attendance was down significantly.
There were 60 booths though and they were crowded. DATE
set the traffic pattern so you almost had to go through
the show floor to get to the next session. Probably the
saddest thing about DATE 2009 was how few editors are
left covering EDA and semiconductors in general. As far
a paid attendance that was down 5; not 5% but 5 engineers
from the DATE show in Munich last year, and we always
expect the number of engineers to be lower than we get
at Munich. So much for the dire predictions we were hearing
prior to DATE.
The technical show was excellent and my favorite part
of DATE, the hallway conversations, was as active as always.
If you want to stay in touch with the progress in EDA
technology, these DATE hallway conversations are a must.
Basically the gang was all there, the only exceptions
were IBM and Intel due to the no-travel policies currently
in effect at both companies.
Some of the sound bites taken from the Keynotes and Panels
were:
- • Mike Muller from ARM – “It’s the System Stupid” then
ended up with “It’s the Service Stupid”. (My “It’s the
Software Stupid” was quoted on a panel the next day.)
• Again Mike Muller – If you want to know about multi-core,
don’t ask a hardware engineer. I’ll have to admit that
one resonated.
• The Multi-Core panel – The number of processor cores
used is determined by the software. We seem to forget
that a lot. Critical Blue has a nice tool that will look
at your code and tell you how many cores you can use.
-
• On Peggy’s Disaggregation/Re-aggregation Panel – Disaggregation
of any market is progress. Specialization is how you make
a profit.
-
• On Wally’s User ESL Panel – ESL Methodologies are maturing
and as they mature they are moving from a hardware-centric
approach to a software-centric approach.
MARKETING, SALES AND TRADE SHOWS
It’s interesting that the flip side of the big vendors,
“We don’t have to have a booth; we know who our customers
are,” is “We don’t go to conferences to see the big guys;
we just pick up the phone and tell
them to visit us. We go to conferences to see what new
technology the little guys have.” This seems to have been
overlooked by the major EDA players.
Another practice that puzzles me is the “all or nothing”
approach to these shows. The attitude is that, “I won’t
go to DATE because we didn’t get many RTL or IC CAD leads
last year.” So that means you didn’t show up with your
ESL offering this year, and DATE is the leading ESL show
today. Let’s face it -- the EDA market is splitting again.
Most engineers involved in System Design couldn’t care
less about a layout tool, and visa versa for the Layout
Engineer. You can have division specific booths and they
don’t need to cost you an arm and a leg. That’s the way
it’s done in the semiconductor world.
Keep in mind most of your customers of tomorrow are not
your customers of today. And remember Mentor almost went
under during the inflection point from Gate Level to RTL
by listening to their customers. That is a practice that
has been very carefully augmented by also listening to
their noncustomers, more specifically their future potential
customers, since Wally joined Mentor.
Gary Smith
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