One of my favorite conferences is EDP – Electronic Design Processes. The 17th EDP symposium will be held on April 8-9 2010. As always, the venue is the Monterey Beach Hotel in beautiful Monterey CA. What I like about EDP is its intimacy and sharing of ideas about how chip design can be done better and where technology might be headed. Participants are industry veterans, company leaders, respected academics, and regular people like me who just soak it in. During the presentations, conversations start up and debates can result. Unlike presentations at large conferences which can be mostly one-way communication, EDP’s talks engage the audience.

There’s still room in the program for some good talks, so if you’d like to present an interesting topic, the organizers want to hear from you. They welcome presentations on a wide range of subjects – but no product commercials, please. The submission deadline is February 26.

This year there will be an emphasis on multi-processing (especially for, but not limited to, EDA) and on 3D ICs. There will be a power(ful) panel too, but at this point, EDP organizers see multi-processing as “hotter” than power. Other topics may include cloud computing, DFM, and the analog revolution (is there one?).

A special part of EDP is the beach walks. There’s nothing like a refreshing walk with stimulating conversations among friends. It was during one of these walks that a colleague convinced me that global warming is real.

EDP is sponsored by the IEEE’s Computer Society and Design Automation Technical Committee. Early registration ends March 1, so if you like valuable workshops and like to save money, sign up this month.

The annual San Jose Synopsys Users’ Group will be held at the Santa Clara Convention Center on March 29-31. The technical program committee is chaired this year by John Busco of NVIDIA (he has a great blog, by the way), and it’s sure to be first-class.

The social media tag for everyone to use is “snugsj10”. Whether you’re posting a blog entry, writing a news article, or sending a tweet, please use the tag to make your content easy to find. Synopsys users who can’t attend SNUG will either appreciate it or be envious – maybe both.

The traditional Tuesday night interoperability event will be unlike any you’ve seen before. I’ll be very interested to hear what you think about it. Along with the always popular prize booth and food (yes, I’m told there *will* be shrimp), you’ll be able to meet Synopsys bloggers in their respective design communities. We’re putting a lot of effort into this occasion, and we think it will be a worthwhile experience.

If you’ll attend SNUG, be sure to say hi to me. I always enjoy meeting my customers.

DVCon 2010 is coming soon –  it starts on Monday, February 22, at the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose CA. DVCon, the Design and Verification Conference, continues to bring valuable information to chip design engineers about modern techniques and industry standards which help them in their day-to-day efforts.

What’s new with DVCon this year? To begin with, it’s one day longer. There were enough high-quality tutorials proposed that the steering committee decided to extend the conference to accommodate them.

The panel that was previously known as the “big-wigs” or “troublemaker’s” panel will take a new approach and focus on real world problems being faced today. Called “What Keeps You Up At Night?”, it will give chief technologists the opportunity to talk about their challenges with contemporary chip design. (You’ll notice there are no EDA companies represented in the lineup of panelists.) The moderator will be JL Gray, a fellow blogger and the author of Cool Verification.

For the first time, the DVCon 2010 Steering Committee included a Social Media Chair (yours truly). In addition to writing blog posts about the conference like several of us did at DVCon 2009, you can expect tweets, photos, videos, and articles. You’ll see the “Twitter Tower by Synopsys” at the conference where attendees can watch the live stream of tweets. If you can’t attend DVCon, fire up your TweetDeck for a personal-sized Twitter Tower.

My colleague, Rick Jamison, and I will host a session on Monday evening at 6pm that everyone is welcome to participate in. Our “Social Media 101 for Engineers” will be an informative (I hope) discussion about social media basics and how today’s new media can help you get your work done better and manage the ever-increasing amount of information that’s out there on Web 2.0. We don’t want to just do a presentation, we want to talk with you, so join us if you can.

As a reminder, everyone posting anything about DVCon is encouraged to use the tag, dvcon, for all blogs, pictures, videos, and articles; use the hashtag #dvcon for tweets. Searching for these tags can put interesting facts, news, and stories at anyone’s fingertips.

On Tuesday, Accellera – the sponsor of DVCon – will have a birthday party. At a lunchtime event, Accellera’s 10th year will be celebrated. I mean all their 10 years, not just the 10th.

Finally, NASCUG (the North America SystemC Users’ Group) will be co-located with DVCon. It’s a good opportunity for system-level designers to capitalize on two events in the same week.

See you at DVCon!

DesignCon 2010 is happening now. One of my fellow bloggers, Colin Warwick, put together a video spoof that I thought you might enjoy. First, a disclaimer: I’m not endorsing his product. Second, a proposal: I think we should standardize it. Third, a second thought: Never mind the standard – I rather like my job.

I’ll pass your comments on to Colin. He’ll probably get a kick out of your feedback.