There are lots of clever ways to tell you why it’s worth your while to attend EDPS in Monterey on April 17th and 18th. It’s less noisy than DAC, less vendor-specific than CDNLive, SNUG or U2U; less crowded than ISSCC; has fewer presentations than DVCon; and boasts no co-located events to confuse your schedule like at ISQED. But that doesn’t tell you why EDPS is worthwhile. It’s the list of speakers and the setting that should convince you to carve out some time on that Thursday and Friday to run down to Monterey – a scenic hour’s drive from Silicon Valley – to attend the 21st annual Electronic Design Process Symposium.
On Thursday, Wally Rhines is giving the keynote after dinner; during the day, Gary Smith’s moderating a session on design flow challenges that includes Frank Schirrmeister, John Swan, Gene Matter, Jim Kenney, and Naresh Sehgal; Sehgal’s leading a session on pre-silicon software development platforms that includes Camille Kokozaki, Shantanu Ganguly, Kumaraswamy Namburu, Schirrmeister, and Vicki Mitchell; Herb Reiter’s moderating a session on FinFETs, 3D-ICs, and FDSOI, that includes Jamil Kawa and Paul McLellan; and the kick-off keynote on Thursday morning will be given by Intel’s Chris Lawless talking about pre-silicon platforms for software development.
On Friday, Dan Nenni’s leading a whole day on IP that includes Martin Lund, Patrick Soheili, Warren Savage, Kurt Shuler, Lluis Paris, Carey Robertson, and Bernard Murphy. Finally, Aparna Dey is General Chair for EDPS. All together, that’s 24 people and a robust ecosystem of knowledge and experience comprising this year’s EDPS program.
But even more compellingly, these people will all be sitting and talking in the same room – a large conference space overlooking Monterey Bay, where it’s totally possible on both Thursday and Friday to ask for clarification during the presentations, and to pepper the speakers with further questions after each presentation is done.
EDPS is pretty extraordinary. It’s immediate, personal, and the closest thing to real conversation about real design that you’ll ever find at something that calls itself a conference. But then, EDPS isn’t really a conference. It’s simply a gathering of professional colleagues who are interested in talking to each other, and hearing from each other about how they go about solving the various technical challenges that link them together as a community.
EDPS is everything that DAC, DVCon, ISQED, ISSCC, CDNLive, SNUG, and U2U is not. The discussions are substantive and the Pacific Ocean provides the soundtrack. You should be there to experience this unique forum; it’s an almost perfect place to learn.
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