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Events
DAC2000 (June/5-9,2000)
STOC held an
exhibition booth and a demo suite for three days (6/5,6,7) at the 37th
DAC (Design Automation Conference, June 5-9, Los Angeles Convention Center),
and promoted SpecC technology and language as de facto standard language
for specification description of systems.
1. About DAC
DAC is the largest international
meeting in the EDA field, where technical sessions, product exhibitions,
and demo suites are held.
It is not only the place for advertisements on new products, but also
the place for business, by announcing to the mass communication, by
exchanging technologies, or by making alliances between vendors.
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Los Angeles Convention Center
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2. STOC Exhibition
There are two kinds of exhibitions
in DAC. One is an "Exhibition Booth" in the large exhibition
hall, where each vendor introduces their products and technologies,
and the other is a "Demo Suite" for customers who need detailed
information individually.
STOC held both exhibitions. For the "exhibition booth",
STOC rent the part of the booth from YXI (Y Explorations, Inc.) which
was founded by Prof. Gajski of UCI. Needles to say, Prof. Gajski
is an inventor of SpecC language. In the booth, we introduced ideal
SOC design flow which will be achievable by SpecC technology. We also
explained basics of SpecC language and STOC activities.
For demo suite, STOC rent a part of the suite from Mentor Graphics
Corp. We gave detailed explanations about SpecC language and STOC
activities to the customers who wished to join the demo suite among
the customers who visited exhibition booth. Participants who wished
to join the demo suite were 40, and actually half of them participated
during three days.
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3. Details of the
Exhibition
3.1. Exhibition
Booth
In the booth, we set up
exhibition panels on the pillar wall in the space of 7 m2,
and representatives stood by the panels for explanation. More than
100 people visited the booth during three days, and we gave them STOC
brochures and STOC mouse-pads as gifts.
Since most visitors were seeking for the tools which enable cost down
or competitive production of design, they seemed to lose their interests
when they were told, "Spec C is not the tool but the language",
or "we are introducing consortium activities". But we convinced
them that the design methodology is indispensable, where highly abstraction
of system is specified first, and then it is converted to detailed
specifications of HW/SW. We further emphasized that Spec C
is proposed for supporting this design methodology, and that its standardization
and popularization contribute our whole industry, which is our motivation
to establish STOC consortium.
We cannot say that general recognition of Spec C language itself
is very high, however, recently published Spec C book (
"Spec C", Kluwer Academic Publishers), which was sold
at the publisher's booth in the same exhibition hall, were so popular
that 100 prepared copies were sold out for only two days. We can guess
high interests to the language and the design methodology in this
industry.
The most frequent question from the customers for the exhibition was
the difference between SystemC and SpecC. The answer was that conflict
between them would never occur. Designers describe system specifications
by Spec C, convert it to the detail gradually, then the detailed
specification is converted to SystemC , HDL or C/C++ language depending
on a target, and finally it is passed to next level engineering tools
available today. They were convinced that SystemC and SpecC are mutually
complementary.
The Next frequent question was that if tools were available. We could
only answer that some member companies were under development. We
wished we could answer more clearly.
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Exhibition Booth |
Representatives |
Exhibition hall |
    
Panel:Panel details are
here. |
3.2. Demo Suite
Even though we were not
able to answer so many questions as time was limited, there were quite
many participants who wished to acquire the latest information.
Data:stoc_dac00_presen.pdf (779K)
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Demo suite |
4. Impressions
The interest in the language
for the system level design was very high, and many participants of
the technical poster sessions also thought that higher abstract language
than present HDL is necessary. At present they seem to focus
on SystemC or Cyn lib (Cyn Apps Inc.) that implement a special library
to design both hardware and software. However, some vendors
concern that particular companies might control language specifications.
In that sense, we could reconfirm the significance of an open technical
consortium like STOC. SpecC is not only the super set of C language,
but it can also describe in a uniform way from a part of the system
to an entire system. Furthermore by providing capabilities to handle
IPs and IP database, SpecC easily enables the reuse of designs.
Looking at the middle or long term, we think that many tools which
are in accordance with the concept of SpecC will come out.
We realized that technical
superiority and success in business is completely different.
Purpose of our consortium is to promote SpecC language. We plan
to develop the tools based on the design methodology cooperating with
many EDA vendors, and we wish we would review this DAC as "the
year for SpecC".
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5.Other Impressions
This year DAC was taken
place at the convention center near downtown in LA, which was rather
thrilling location. People from some vendors were not allowed to go
outside at night. We behaved carefully, and finished DAC without any
accidents!
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LA down town |
| There were
many vendors, who attracted participants by free gifts and attractions.
Such companies seemed to consider DAC as the chance for getting publicity
of their company as they are planning to IPO. On the other hand, there
were other many vendors who did not show off but trying to tell their
substantial technical information, and they attracted enough attention
of participants. |
2000/6/14,
M.I.
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