Mousetraps, alligators and EDA
I didn’t go to the 2011 Design Automation Conference in San Diego because this year I decided to stay home and see what I could pick up virtually from video, audio and news coverage day to day. It was much more cost effective and focused, despite the usual bandwidth problems with the convention center. My apologies for mixing metaphors but this is how I wrap up the issues arising out of DAC. It is said that if you build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door, but when your customers are up to their asses in alligators, vermin are not their critical problem. Gary Smith gave his usual glowing report of the future for the industry (he thinks it’s well on the way to being a $6.6 Billion industry by 2015, and once again he claims that this year Electronic system level design (ESL) is going to be really big this year (just like it has every year for the past decade, according to Gary.) But this year he added a big caveat. He said that the indus...