The road to ES Design West: AI
ES Design West is a little more than four weeks away (July 9-11). Co-located with SEMICON West in San Francisco’s Moscone Center, it will give design engineers who could not make DAC the chance to meet with key EDA and IP players closer to home. More importantly, it will allow those now taking a more system oriented view – and, really, who isn’t? – the chance to bundle a visit by checking out other leading and increasingly important players in the semiconductor design chain.
One of the more powerful drivers behind system-based thinking is artificial intelligence (AI). Custom implementations are becoming necessary as AI and machine learning (ML) algorithms test the capacity of standard silicon platforms in both the datacenter and at the edge. Use-cases are also fragmenting in terms of both the performance and the compute strategies they need.
The AI drive has been a major factor in getting exhibitors and attendees to sign up for ES Design West already. As Rich Wawrzyniak, Principal Market Analyst for ASIC & SoC at Semico Research, notes, “It adds into the mix the discussion of issues, challenges and solutions around the emerging markets for Artificial Intelligence. Something on everyone’s mind today.”
Speaking for many of the vendors, Vic Kulkarni, Vice President and Chief Strategist in the Office of the CTO for the ANSYS Semiconductor Business Unit, captures that mindfulness in terms of AI and its wider impact on technology and the customer base.
“In addition to the leading classical semiconductor companies, business growth is being driven by the emerging custom-silicon systems companies, such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Automotive Tier Ones and so on,” he says. “By being co-located with SEMICON West at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, ES Design West will attract attendees from Silicon Valley-based systems companies in all vertical segments, including AI/ML, 5G, high performance computing, autonomous vehicles, and advanced mobile.”
It follows that not only the show floor but also the conference program – both that for ES Design West and that which it shares with SEMICON West – will feature AI strongly. And not just in terms of use-cases. “The event’s program will feature a wide range of topics that are critical for the future of the industry, including the influence of machine learning and AI on EDA,” says Stan Krolikoski, Fellow at Cadence Design Systems.
To that end, here are three sessions of note that might ‘pay’ for your time in San Francisco.
The ‘biggie’ will be on Tuesday, July 9 and runs all day. The AI Design Forum brings together some of the most powerful players in the business, including Synopsys Chairman and Co-CEO Aart de Geus, AMD President and CEO Lisa Su, Xilinx President and CEO Victor Peng, and Applied Materials President and CEO Gary Dickerson. There will also be senior speakers from Arm, Google and Qualcomm.
Within ES Design West itself, one of six ‘Meet the Experts’ sessions will specifically address the broad implications of AI on design and on the tools themselves. ‘Machine Learning, AI, and EDA‘ takes place on Wednesday, July 10 from 1:30pm-4:30pm. Google, Synopsys, Yobe and Arm will be among those providing insight.
That same morning, a SEMICON West TechTalk, AI at the Gate & Cloud at the Edge, will bring together senior executives from ON Semiconductor, IBM Research and the Heterogeneous Integration Roadmap Committee to offer a more system and package-level on enabling innovation and its implications (Wednesday, July 10, from 10:30am).
It is too big and too broad a program to cover fully here, but it is worth exploring the websites for both events to see what elements address your immediate or traditional challenges and those now pressing upon you from other parts of the semiconductor design and supply chain.
You can register for ES Design West and explore its line-up here. More details on the SEMICON West program are also available here.
Click on the link for the second of these previews, The road to ES Design West: Systems.
