Have you ever heard of the DV Club?
Posted by Juergen Jaeger on July 14th, 2009
I recently got an invitation to attend a session of the DV Club (yes, you guessed right, DV stands for Design Verification) in Milpitas. The 2 guest speakers for that event are supposed to talk about “leveraging low-cost FPGAs prototyping”, right on topic and of course I accepted the invitation.
Being German, I also did my homework and first checked out the DV Club website …Â so far so good:
- The tagline reads “Sharing knowledge among the verification community”
- A nice, organized website
- A blog
- And you can sign up for a newsletter
I promptly got a confirmation with further details about the upcoming event … so far so good!
You can imagine that I was very surprised then to receive an email, 2 days before the event that I have been uninvited:
“Hello Juergen,
My sponsors read over my RSVP list for the DV Club luncheon this week and have unfortunately asked me to remove you from the guest list. I apologize for this – Cadence is our main sponsor and has the right of refusal to competitors. Once again my apologies – if you were a consultant rather than work for Synopsys I could invite you…”
So here is an organization who finally is trying to address one of the biggest challenges, and cost factors, in today’s ASIC and SoC design, a wonderful idea and what users as well as EDA tool providers need and should support. But then, when the rubber hits the road, turns out to be nothing more than another marketing venue for its so-called sponsors. VERY DISAPPOINTING INDEED!
Today’s verification challenges are so big and so diverse that a multitude of tools and solutions are needed to truly help the design and verification engineers. And these tools will most likely come from multiple vendors. Besides, competition is good, it encourages everybody to improve, advance and innovate, to the benefit of the user.
It is sad to see that a great idea, like the DV Club, is limiting itself to becoming their corporate sponsor’s spokesperson.
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July 22nd, 2009 at 12:36 am
[...] Juergen Jaeger talks about what it’s like to be dis-invited from a Cadence-sponsored design verification club. [...]
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:56 am
Hi Juergen. This is indeed a shame because DVClub does serve a very important and unique role. I have presented at a number of them and have never seen a refusal such as this before. There is of course an easy way around it, and that is for Synopsys to become the major sponsor and to promise never to refuse entry to anyone. I am sure that Eric Hennenhoefer, the founder and organizer of DVClub would welcome such a move.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Hi Brian, I do agree with you that the DVClub COULD play an important and unique role. Howwever that would also require it to be at least a little bit vendor independent.
Having seen this behavior makes me wonder if the DVClub could even accept a Synopsys sponsorship at this time?
August 12th, 2009 at 1:27 am
In fact, this act does more damage to the design verification community. The “rejecting” company (Cadence?) seems to be going in the wrong direction…instead of embracing dialog, openness and two-way conversation, this move is just the opposite! How can one work toward the greater good (i.e., for the customers), if one creates an “exclusive” club? This is thinking that goes back to the 1900s, honestly. Otherwise, it should be called what it is…a corporate closed-door event, in which case it’s perfectly fine to be selective. Oh well…since this is a open blog, thought I’d share these 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Blogging (no ulterior motive at the link, just some good points).
I don’t agree with all of the points (#3 for example), but I DO agree with #10: Your competitors will read your blog – Get over it! Same applies to this DVClub nonsense . Competitors — in all good faith — WILL always be interested…GET OVER IT! http://ow.ly/15KmY8