PANEL: CAD PROFESSION:
FACTS, TRENDS AND ILLUSIONS

Moderator: Daniel D. Gajski-Univ. of California, Irvine, CA While we may not always admit it, the CAD profession is strongly dependent on the underlying electronics and semiconductor industries. A 10x growth in semiconductor capacity every 6 years coupled with constant human intelligence has forced designers to rely on CAD tools to deliver their 10x productivity improvements. CAD responded to the challenge and prospered in the 1980's as high-productivity solutions such as automatic physical design and logic synthesis were delivered. However, the pace in semiconductor processing shows no sign of slowing down; in fact, many believe semiconductor manufacturing is outpacing the ability of designers to design with their current tools. This poses many challenges to the CAD community which we must understand in order to guarantee relevance in our work. This panel will explore the drivers in the CAD industry from several perspectives: the underlying semiconductor revolution and its impact on the marketplace and CAD in particular; the EDA industry and its challenges in delivering solutions to current problems while staying profitable; venture capital and the view of start-ups to solving this problem; and the role of academic research in offering the next generation of solutions. 
Panel Members:
Ron Collett - Collett International, Inc., Santa Clara, CA
Robert Colwell- Intel Corp., Hillsboro, OR
Carlos Dangelo - LSI Logic, Milpitas, CA
James Duley - Hewlett Packard Co., Palo Alto, CA
Richard Newton - Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA