Help preserve EDA’s slice of electronics history

By Paul Dempsey |  No Comments  |  Posted: October 10, 2013
Topics/Categories: Blog - EDA, - General  |  Tags: ,  | Organizations:

The EDA Consortium is holding a ‘Back To The Future’ fundraiser next Wednesday (October 16) at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View to support efforts to record and then promote EDA’s contribution to the electronics industry for posterity. As this post goes live, tickets are still available – so let’s talk about why you should consider getting one, or finding some other way to help out if you can’t make it.

Young industries often don’t think about history. For starters, they don’t have time to. Many of their early pioneers are still knee-deep in running their companies and catching the next wave of innovation. Time-to-market pressures, increasing complexity and all that – you know – mundane stuff.

But it’s roughly half-a-century since EDA really arrived on the scene and in that time, its contributions have been invaluable. Where would we all be without the ability to automate our way out of design challenges and, increasingly, pull on both the EDA and IP words so that we can drop in foundation technologies and concentrate on the things that make our products different and better? Or to be blunt, who could handcraft an iPhone from scratch?

In short, it’s a good time to take stock.

EDA industry support

EDAC’s idea behind Back to the Future is simple. Round up key players in EDA and IP for an evening that will mark EDA in itself but more importantly provide an initial bucket of cash so that the Computer History Museum can gather artifacts from EDA history and interview as many of its greatest innovators as possible worldwide. The enthusiasm is already there – but that can only take you so far.

The goal is to create an EDA Oral Histories Collection and Exhibit at the museum in Mountain View.

If you want some idea of the the support Back To the Future already has, take a deep breath right now. Here are some of the luminaries who have endorsed and will be attending next week’s event: Bernie Aronson, Jacques Benkoski, Robert Brayton, Randal Bryant, David Burow, Raul Camposano, Rick Carlson, Edmund Cheng, Joe Costello, Dean Drako, Aart de Geus, John Eurich, Robert Gardner, Jack Harding, Soha Hassoun, Penny Herscher, Jim Hogan, Chenming Hu, John Kibarian, Kathryn Kranen, Ernest S. Kuh, Rajeev Madhavan, Dave Millman, Alan Naumann, Wally Rhines, Scott Sandler, John Sanguinetti, Simon Segars, James. E. Soloman, Sanjay Srivastava, and Ravi Subramanian.

If you want to join such exalted company yourself, individual seats are $200 (EDAC members) and $250 (non-members), with ten-seat tables also available at $1,750 and $2,250 for members and non-members respectively.

The EDA auction

Attending will also give you a chance to bid in the Back To The Future auction, pouring more good money into a good cause. There’s something on the auction list for everyone from, as just a few examples, staycations to wine to oil paintings to sports memorabilia to your own chances to have a private sit-down discussion over lunch or dinner with each of the ‘big three’ EDA CEOs – Aart de Geus, Wally Rhines and Lip-Bu Tan – as well as ARM CEO Simon Segars. It’s a huge list, again reflecting the concerted industry drive behind the museum project.

So, want to sign up for a seat or a table – just click here.

Or, maybe you can’t make next week’s festivities but would still like to show your support. You can email the team at bttf.event@edac.org.

We think this is a terrific idea and we’re sure that many of you will agree. Let’s give it the support it needs and deserves.

 

 

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