The Design Automation Conference is coming up soon. It's in Las Vegas from June 2 to 6 in the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC).

Rob Aitken

I was putting together a post on what I thought were good reasons to attend, but I decided to call up Rob Aitken of Arm, who is this year's general chair, and get his perspective, too.

He told me that he's a big fan of the keynotes. They've made an effort to expand beyond the usual EDA industry keynotes and get some other perspectives.

On Monday at 9:00am, opening DAC, is a visionary talk by Mark Yoseloff of UNLV about the gaming industry. Come to DAC and find out about gaming. Hey, it's Vegas, gaming capital of the world. That's followed by a more typical keynote by Microsoft's Galen Hunt on IoT security.

The biggest name has to be Thomas Dolby who has done a lot of work on electronics. He got his nickname (his real name is Robertson) since he was always playing around with tape decks, so he's actually named after Ray Dolby (who I wrote about in Dolby Atmos and Tensilica). He told Rob that electronic music is at the stage where we can get a single instrument to sound "humanish", but we can't get a group to behave "groupish". Anyway, Thomas Dolby gives the Tuesday keynote at 9:20am.

Another interesting looking keynote is on Wednesday at 8:45am, where John Cohn will talk about how he went from being an EDA practitioner to reality TV star. And I thought I had a weird career path going from a software engineer to a journalist.

Immediately following that on Wednesday at 9:20am is Bas Verkaik who had a team at Delft build an electric motorbike and then rode it around the world. He didn't take a generator or anything, so he had plenty of adventures charging it on local electricity wherever they were.

There is a focus on Deep Learning, today's hot topic du jour. Chris Rowen (ex Tensilica/Cadence, see my post Rowen on Vision, Innovation, and the Deep Learning Explosion) presents on the pavilion stage in the exhibit hall at 10:30 on Wednesday. Thursday is a particular focus on machine learning (ML). That day's keynote is by MIT's James DiCarlo on reverse-engineering visual intelligence. There is a session on ML deployment in the designer track, a session on ML in the research track, and a panel on spiking neural nets at 1:30pm (with panelists from Purdue, Google, Intel, and NVIDIA).

So having given you Rob's perspective (from his car stuck in a traffic jam...this never happens in Silicon Valley!) here are 10 reasons to go to DAC.

1. Las Vegas

It's Vegas baby! Who needs an excuse to go to Vegas...but if you do, what better excuse is there than DAC. There are a zillion shows to see. Ones I've seen over the years and recommend are:

• Cirque du Soleil's Help! (Beatles music)
• Cirque du Soleil's O (circus in the water...eau, geddit?)
• Penn and Teller's magic show in the Rio.

Want a restaurant recommendation? Raku is the best Japanese food in Las Vegas (according to both me and my Michelin-starred chef son-in-law), off the strip at 5030 Spring Mountain Road. It's small so you need to get a reservation. Splash out and get the omakase, you won't be disappointed.

But every famous chef in the world seems to have an outlet somewhere in Vegas, usually in one of the big casino hotels. And if buffets are your thing, you're in the buffet capital of the world.

2. Cheap Hotels and Flights

During CES in January, hotels and flights get expensive with 150,000 people coming to town. But Las Vegas is huge compared to DAC and so hotels and flights are inexpensive. I think an Uber from San Jose to San Francisco is more than a flight from San Jose to Vegas.

Hotels are cheap. It took me just two minutes to discover that the Westgate Casino and Resort, right next to the convention center so you just have to walk across the parking lot, is $37 per night right now on the usual hotel booking sites. 

3. Keynotes

There are great keynotes this year. See my discussion with Rob at the start of this post. There are also daily "Sky Talks" on a number of subjects such as IBM's Leon Stok on Quantum Computing, Arm's Carolyn Herzon on Ethical AI, and Micron's Gurtej Sandhu on Memory Futures.

4. Free Lunch

As usual, Cadence is organizing lunch each day, with a different topic. All lunches are in the Westgate Hotel (next to LVCC) in the Paradise South Room, from 11:30am to 1:00pm.

• Monday: Closing Analog and Mixed-Signal Verification in 5G, HPC, and Automotive
• Tuesday: Machine Learning and the Impact on the Digital Design Engineer
• Wednesday: Optimizing Verification Throughput for Advanced Designs in a Connected World

5. The Denali Party

It's an institution that started long before Cadence acquired Denali. If you want to find out how it started, read my post Party Like It's 1999—How the Denali Party Started.

It is Tuesday, June 4 from 8:30pm to 12:30am at Brooklyn Bowl, 3545 S. Las Vegas Boulevard.

You CANNOT just show up at the door no matter who you are. You must register. Then, before noon on Tuesday, you must come to the special desk at the Cadence booth (915) and pick up your wristband. If you do not pick up your wristband in time, it will be given to someone else.

So come along. You won't be surprised to know that the music will be provided by Disco Inferno, as it has been since the very first Denali party. I doubt the set list to the right will be exactly what they play this year...but I can guarantee that you'll be able to do all the actions to YMCA at some point during the evening.

6. A Year of Breakfasts

After noon on Tuesday, the Denali Party desk becomes my desk on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons for giving away my book A Year of Breakfasts. I'll scan your badge and sign you up for Sunday Brunch (if you are not already subscribed) and give you a free book.

7. Cloud

EDA is moving into the cloud, led by Cadence and Cadence Cloud that we announced at DAC last year. Once again there will be a Design Infrastructure Alley, with booths of AWS, Microsoft, Google, IBM on the cloud side, and many EDA infrastructure companies. Cadence is there. Yes, we have two booths. The main one at 915 and the Cadence Cloud one at 1131 in the alley.

8. Cadence Theater

As always, the Cadence Theater in the booth will be featuring presentations from many of our customers (and the occasional Cadence person). The schedule is not quite finalized yet, but when it is then this page will have the whole program.

9. Bagpipes

For years, HP used to close the show with bagpipes played at full volume on a huge speaker system. When workstation vendors stopped coming to DAC, Forte took over...with real bagpipes. Cadence acquired Forte and the tradition continues. The exhibit floor will close on Wednesday afternoon at 6:00pm with the Forte bagpipes.

10. Catch Phrase

It's all summed up in the DAC tag line:

From Chips to Systems, Learn Today, Create Tomorrow.

I think we should go for "What Happens at DAC Stays at DAC". On second thoughts, maybe not.

Sign up for Sunday Brunch, the weekly Breakfast Bytes email.