ESD Alliance CEO Panel: April 6th

In the days when the ESD Alliance was still called EDAC, they used to organize a CEO Forecast Panel at the start of the year. This never worked that well since any date chosen would be in one of the big three EDA companies' quiet periods between the end of the quarter and a few days after the earnings release. So they couldn't say much about their forecast.

There is a CEO panel this year. It will be Thursday April 6, at 6:30pm (for the event itself), preceded by a "private" networking reception from 5:30pm to 6:30pm. I put private in quotes, since it is open to anyone who works for a company that is an ESD Alliance member, which is pretty much everyone. The event will take place at Synopsys, in building B. (If you haven't visited Synopsys for years, they have moved out of the old Daisy buildings to the other side of 237. Put 690 Middlefield Road into your GPS.)

Since this year, the CEO Panel is later in the year and is not an annual forecast. Let's hope the CEOs don't say their lawyers have told them not to say anything. I think Cadence is the only one of the four aligned with calendar quarters anyway, and ARM and Mentor are (or will be [BREAKING NEW: Siemens Mentor closed today]) subsidiaries of larger corporations and so will not, presumably, report independently in the future anyway.

The four CEOs on the panel are:

• Aart de Geus (you can't get further ahead in alphabetical order than having your name starting 'aa'), co-CEO of Synopsys (the other co-CEO being Chi-Foon Chan)
• Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Cadence
• Simon Segars, CEO of ARM (now a subsidiary of Softbank)
• Wally Rhines, CEO of Mentor (as of today, part of Siemens)

The panel will be moderated by Ed Sperling. I was going to reveal that at a previous ESD Alliance event (well, it would still have been EDAC back then) someone said that he started his career as a crime reporter in the Central Valley. But it is right there in his bio on the ESD Alliance website: "Prior to that he was a daily newspaper investigative reporter covering crime and corruption." I still find it amazing, since I come from an engineering background, that people like Ed (and my predecessor here at Cadence, Richard Goering) do such a good job covering such a complex subject having gone to journalism school.

The format is that each CEO will present a brief opening statement, and then there will be a moderated audience discussion. I think that means that you get to ask questions, so bring some interesting ones. I've moderated enough panels myself to know that Ed will have a few of his own, but I always regard a panel as a success if I never need to use the questions I prepared in advance, so let's make this one a success by that definition.

The topic of the panel is billed as "where our industry—the semiconductor design ecosystem—is heading." Grab your wine when the event starts, and play the Breakfast Bytes drinking game:

• When anyone mentions autonomous self-driving cars, drink
• When anyone uses the words "semiconductor industry consolidation", drink
• You don't get to drink if someone talks about IoT, only if they talk about IIoT, the industrial internet of things
• You don't get a drink for a mention of Moore's Law, too easy, only if they talk about More than Moore
• If Wally has more than three slides with bar charts, drink
• If Lip-Bu says he is excited about some semiconductor segment, and is investing in it, drink
• If Simon plays music created by his son, drain your glass
• If Aart talks with a Dutch accent...no drink for you, he always does...but you can drink freely if you know how to pronounce Aart de Geus correctly in Dutch
• If Wally talks with a German accent, drain your glass and drink the rest of the bottle

The event is free (for ESD Alliance members), but please register so that they know what to expect. Get more details and register.

New ESD Alliance Chairman

Nothing directly to do with the panel, but some other recent ESD Alliance news is that a new (as of February) Chairman of the Board of Directors is Grant Pierce, who is the CEO of Sonics in his day job. The rest of the board is currently:

• Our panel: Aart, Wally, Lip-Bu, and Simon
• Dean Drako, CEO of IC Manage
• Amit Gupta, CEO of Solido
• John Kibarian, CEO of PDF Solutions
• Lucio Lanza, managing director of Lanza TechVentures

A reminder, since his appointment was just last year, Bob Smith is executive director ('executive' means he has to do some work). Learn more about the ESD Alliance.