DAC at 50: The Second 25 Years

1 DAC at 50: The Second 25 Years Rob A. Rutenbar University of Illinois at Urbana-­‐Champaign How does one survey a quarter century of technical contributions at a world-­‐class venue like the Design Automation Conference? This was the daunting challenge I faced when asked to survey the second 25 years of DAC’s history at the 50th anniversary conference event in 2013. One can imagine several strategies, for example: • Identify a set of “greatest hits” technologies and methods. There were assuredly many such breakthroughs across these years. But how to winnow the list to something of manageable length, without slighting an important idea or innovation? • Identify a set of “most important EDA tools” from these years. The way we make impact is to deliver working software and flows to our friends in the design community. But this underweights the long and winding path through ideas and experiments published at DAC, whose exploration necessarily precedes each delivered tool. • Identify a set of the “most important EDA startups” from these years. Our industry has been a vital one because of its active entrepreneurial ecosystem, engaged broadly across academia, startups, and larger established EDA companies. But again – who makes the list, and who does not? Attempts to enumerate “Best Of...” lists seem destined to miss something vital. I decided this survey needed a better idea. DAC 1989-2012: A “Big Data” Approach