11,952 Gathered for 43rd Design Automation Conference in San Francisco; EDA Community Welcomed by San Francisco Mayor as Industry Thronged to Exciting Keynotes, Diverse Technical Program and Active Show Floor.

BOULDER, Colo. -- The 43rd Design Automation Conference (DAC) filled the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco July 24 - 28 as the electronic design automation (EDA) industry gathered for its premier annual event. Activity buzzed on the exhibit floor, where more than 250 companies were represented, and the conference rooms were filled to capacity for the technical sessions as attendees explored the challenges facing the electronic design community today and the latest solutions available to meet them. The 43rd DAC drew 6,875 general conference and exhibit attendees and another 5,077 event participants, made up of academics, researchers, developers, designers, managers and executives in EDA, chip, and electronics companies.

"Two weeks ago in San Francisco, as innovators from around the world gathered for the EDA community's annual 'must-attend' event, DAC demonstrated the vitality of the industry," said Ellen Sentovich, 43rd DAC general chair. "Exhibitors, general conference attendees, speakers and press have all commented on the excitement and air of optimism felt throughout the technical conference and on the exhibit floor."

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom welcomed the EDA industry to the city and recognized the industry's premier event by proclaiming Tuesday, July 25 as "Design Automation Conference (DAC) Day."

On Monday, July 24, popular EDA industry veteran, Joe Costello, board chairman of Orb Networks, Inc. gave a special keynote address, "iPod or Iridium - Which One Are You Going To Be?" on key elements of success in the multimedia, gaming and entertainment applications markets, attended by 2,000 people. The Tuesday, July 25 keynote given by Dr. Hans Stork, senior vice president and chief technology officer, director of Silicon Technology Department, Texas Instruments Inc., was titled, "Structuring Process and Design for Future Mobile Communication Devices," and discussed design for future mobile communication devices. Alessandro Cremonesi, Strategy and System Technology Group vice president and Advanced System Technology general manager, STMicroelectronics, gave the Thursday keynote, "The Challenges of Convergence," where he described not only challenges in the future electronics market, but also those connecting electronics and bio-applications.

The third annual DAC Management Day was held on Tuesday, July 25, and offered managers a forum for sharing information on key decision-making processes as well as current technology trends. The opening panel session, "How Will the Fabless Model Survive?" was moderated by Don Clark of the Wall Street Journal with panelists from leading EDA, foundry and semiconductor companies discussing the technical and business challenges they face today.

More than 200 technical presentations were given during the conference covering a broad range of topics, including several key focus areas such as design-for-manufacture (DFM), power management, system-level and embedded systems design and verification and test methodologies. DAC added a new track topic this year, "Beyond the Die," which focused on the challenges of beyond-die integration and packaging, such as chip-package co-design, system-in-package (SIP) and new integration techniques such as 3D and stacked designs.

This year's DAC featured a special MEGa, (Multimedia, Entertainment, and Games) theme on the design of gaming, entertainment and multimedia systems. Tied to this year's DAC location in San Francisco, a hotbed of software and content development, the popular panels included, "Inside the iPod" and the "Xbox 360 Uncloaked" on the design issues tackled in the making of these breakthrough consumer devices.

Video synchronized with presentations for this year's keynotes and 15 other key 43rd DAC sessions are available on the DAC Web site, www.dac.com, free of charge, as a service to the DAC community.

The 44th DAC will be held June 4-8, 2007 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego.

About DAC

DAC is the premier forum for the electronic design industry to exchange information on products, methodologies and processes. Attended by more than 11,000 developers, designers, researchers, managers and engineers from leading electronics companies and universities around the world, DAC includes 250 exhibitors and offers a robust technical program covering the electronics industry's hottest trends to bring people to the event.

The conference is sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Design Automation (ACM/SIGDA), the Circuits and Systems Society and Computer Aided Network Design Technical Committee of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE/CASS/CANDE), the IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA) and the Electronic Design Automation Consortium (EDA Consortium). More details about DAC are available at: www.dac.com.