A very successful CDNLive! India 2008 user conference took place on October 16 & 17 in Bangalore, India. Customers had a choice of five technical tracks and over 40 presentations, including four product roadmap presentations on each of Cadence’s technology platforms.

The tracks were Custom IC, Digital IC and Logic Design, Verification and Silicon Package-Board Co-Design. Companies that participated include Freescale Semiconductor, Texas Instruments, NXP, ARM, ST Microelectronics, MindTree Consulting, Intel, PMC Sierra, Cosmic Circuits, TTM Inc, and more.

The event saw two invited papers from CDNLive! events in Silicon Valley and EMEA – one in Verification track by Analog Devices titled “Translation of an Existing VMM-Based Testbench to OVM” and the other in SPB track by Valor, Inc., titled “Reducing PCB Revision Spins with Concurrent DFM”.

There was also one tutorial session by ARM on “Implementing CortexA9 Multicore Processors For High Performance And Low Power Requirements At 65nm and Below Using ARM-Cadence iRM”.

In his general session keynote Ted Vucurevich said, “Increasing system complexity poses enormous challenges. Studies suggest 60 percent of all complex projects missed their schedule, and 40 percent of the integrated circuits exceeded costs targets. Today’s challenging economic times call for design engineers to create transformational products that can drive economic growth. Cadence users are riding the wave of design innovation with unique solutions for power management, modeling, verification management, and software as a service, bringing their design ideas to life.”

A veteran of the semiconductor industry and serial entrepreneur Tushar Dave talked about what it takes to be an entrepreneur – the drive to create a winning solution is what creates an entrepreneur. He shared some examples of great entrepreneurs of our time – from Jesus Christ and Mahatma Gandhi to Bill Gates and Andy Grove. Mr Dave shared with the audience some of the lessons he has learned by being an entrepreneur several times over – believe in yourself and your ideals, lead and execute with passion, recognize that your team is instrumental to your success and learn from your failures.

NewPath Ventures is the first Indo-US venture capital fund focused on cross-border investments that leverage India's cost effective talent and high growth emerging market for achieving superior returns. The fund was co-founded in April 2002 by Vinod K. Dham and Tushar A. Dave.

CDNLive! India was also the venue for showcasing Cadence’s expanded Solutions & Services offerings, specifically InCyte and the recently-launched Software as a Service (SaaS).

Adam Traidman, Group Marketing Director for Chip Planning Solutions, presented a session on InCyte, a system that provides a complete cockpit for early chip planning enabling accurate estimation and rapid what-if analysis (www.chipestimate.com).

This was followed by a presentation by Samuel George, Services Group Director, who spoke about Software as a Service. These production-proven, ready-to-go design environments are accessible via the Internet and provide design teams a faster time-to-productivity with reduced risk and cost.

The customer presentation in this track was given by NXP who spoke about their experiences with leading edge 45nm physical design services. There was also a short presentation on design foundation courses.

ARM (worldwide sponsor) and CADD Centre had booths to showcase their technologies and offerings. There was a Canvas Conversations area that showcased some of the papers that could not be accommodated in the main sessions. Seven customers and the student Design Contest runner-up team displayed their papers in this area which was located in the main conference thoroughfare.

There was also a demo area for Cadence’s Palladium II machine, a high-performance, single-system, multi-user accelerator/emulator that enables hardware/software co-verification and system-level verification prior to post-silicon bring-up.

The best paper in each track was judged by invited customer experts who sat in on each of the tracks. The awards were announced at the closing ceremony on October 16 and were presented by Jaswinder Ahuja, Corporate Vice President and Managing Director, Cadence Design Systems (I) Pvt Ltd.

• Custom IC
  IC612 Pilot in 45nm Library Design at ST: Project surya Conclusions
  ST Microelectronics
• Verification
  Verification Methodology Using Mixed Mode Simulation Flow
  Freescale Semiconductor
• Digital IC
  Optimal Logical ECO Flow
  Freescale Semiconductor
• SPB
  Design Challenges With HDI PCBs
  Intel Technologies

The winner of the Cadence Design Contest 2008 was felicitated during the opening ceremony by Ted Vucurevich and Jaswinder Ahuja, Corporate Vice President and Managing Director, Cadence India. This year’s winner was the team from Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad. Their paper was titled “Design of a Low Power, Variable Resolution Flash-Type ADC”.

Conference Proceedings are now available for download. Use your Cadence.com user account to login.

For questions regarding CDNLive! India 2008,
email cdnlive_india@cadence.com.