Report from CDNLive! EMEA 2009

CDNLive! in Munich had it all - stimulating customer papers, demonstrations of new Cadence solutions, lots of lively technical interaction, even dancers in the exhibition hall and a funk band at the evening party. Given customer travel restrictions, there were fewer attendees from the more distant areas of Europe, but many sessions were packed and the common areas were busy. I attended most of the sessions in the Functional Verification track, where the room was always full and in fact we had to bring in extra chairs at the first break between papers.

Across the presentations from customers, partners, and Cadence experts, the key themes that emerged for functional verification can be summarized in four TLAs: VIP, OVM, MDV, and ABV. Verification reuse was probably the most frequent mention: several customer papers described the value of using Cadence VIP and most of the OVM project "success stories" stressed the role of VIP and reuse as well.

Clearly many customers have embraced metric-driven verification (MDV); some are also starting to take advantage of Cadence's unified metrics across simulation, formal, and hardware. The traditionally adjacent world of formal and assertion-based verification (ABV) is now deeply connected to the world of testbenches and OVM. 

I was very impressed with the depth and quality of most of the presentations and I will be curious to see if these same themes are reprised in the presentations at the five other CDNLive! events scheduled throught the rest of the year.

Tom Anderson

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