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On Cores
Meditations on the semiconductor and IP industries
By Warren Savage, CEO, IPextreme



Saturday Jun. 09, 2007

Is DAC an IP Show?

Is DAC an IP show? For ten years now, it has been debated whether IP companies should exhibit at this show. It seems the debate has continued this year based on the companies present.

Let's have a look at 27 IP companies with booths as best as I could locate:

• ARM (Public)
• Analog Bits
• Arasan
• Avery Design Systems
• Beach Solutions
• CAST
• Ciranova
• Denali
• Dolphin Integration
• Einfochips
• Envision Technology
• Handshake Solutions
• Innovative Silicon
• Mosaid
• Mosis (Public)
• KETI
• Kilopass
• Mentor Graphics (EDA as mainline business)
• Mixel
• MOSAID
• PLD Applications
• Silicon Hive
• Silicon Image
• Silistics
• Synopsys (EDA as mainline business)
• Semifore
• Virage Logic (Public)

Out of a total of 249 exhibitors, that's 11% of the show was IP, and only 3 public IP companies. Lots and lots of startup companies looking for customers. Interesting to note a few major IP companies were "no shows" this year, and 3 of 4 are public:

• ARC (Public)
• MIPS (Public)
• RAMBUS (Public)
• Tensilica

So, it seems that the jury is still out on whether IP companies should spend the money to attend DAC. Clearly this is still an EDA show, with 89% of the population being EDA companies. The question really is whether the people that buy the EDA tools (not necessary the ones that use them...) attend DAC in any great number. IP buyers seem to be different personnel.

In fact, there is some question whether DAC should continue at all. Rajeev Madhavan of Magma suggested that DAC might be well served to merge with SemiCon. (DAC should consider combining with Semicon: Magma CEO)

That indeed is a great question, and I'm sure the question will arise once again next year as IP companies again decide "is DAC worth it?"


Posted by Warren Savage on Saturday Jun. 09, 2007 | Add a Comment



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    • About the Author

    Warren Savage, President and CEO of IPextreme, is a well-known and published authority in the field of semiconductor intellectual property. He has a long history of pushing the envelope of design methodology from his work in fault tolerant computing at Tandem Computers in the 1980's and driving reliable design metholologies into commercial practice at Synopsys for its DesignWare IP product in the 1990s. Much of his thinking became embodied in the seminal book on IP reuse, the Reuse Methodology Manual. Warren is taking his vision to the next level with his latest company, IPextreme, which is focused on enabling broad commercialization of IP captive in large semiconductor companies.