DVCon is next week: UVM, recruiting, and more

February 24, 2011

The Design and Verification Conference (DVCon) starts on Monday, February 28, 2011. This year there are some exciting new additions that I'd like to highlight for you. (And encourage you to attend—yes, I'm the general chair of DVCon this year.)

The usual high-quality technical program will remain the center of gravity for DVCon. Technical Program Chair Ambar Sarkar gave us a behind-the-scenes view on Conversation Central last week (listen here). There were so many valuable abstracts submitted and not enough time slots to accommodate them all, that we added two poster sessions on Tuesday to expose you to important information you wouldn't get otherwise.

The Universal Verification Methodology (UVM)—the newest standard ratified by Accellera—will be featured in tutorials, technical sessions, and one of the two panels at DVCon. You'll learn what UVM is and how to deploy it for your complex designs.

In the technical sessions, you'll also gain worthwhile knowledge of advancements in modern design and verification including SystemVerilog, low power, mixed-signal, TLM-2, and a variety of techniques and approaches to attaining the best design verification possible.

A unique feature of DVCon is that the attendees get to choose the Best Paper. This year, the voting will be done online (hooray—no more paper ballots to tally). You can use your mobile device, laptop, or the computers provided at the show to vote during or at the end of the conference. I'll have the honor of announcing the winner on Wednesday at 5:00pm.

As a special event, Qualcomm will host a reception on Monday night from 5:00–7:00pm in the Donner Ballroom located in the Doubletree Hotel. They will give a short presentation on verification methodology by Qualcomm staff and will provide hors d'oeuvres and drinks. One lucky attendee will walk away with an untethered HTC Evo 4G. Best of all, Qualcomm is there with recruiting in mind. (Personally, I'm delighted by this. Recruiting is the nicest word I've heard in a long time.)

The Industry Leaders panel on Wednesday is called "Making Great Products Great", and the panelists will talk about some amazing products and how they made them great. (I'm really looking forward to hearing about fixing the Hubble Space Telescope.)

The keynote speech this year will be delivered by Wally Rhines, Chairman and CEO of Mentor Graphics. It's always interesting to listen to Wally and hear his insights into our amazing (crazy) industry.

One of the things people told us in last year's DVCon attendee survey was that they wanted more vendors in the exhibits. We are delighted to announce that there will be twice the number of exhibitors at DVCon this year compared with last year, and 14 will be there for the first time.

NASCUG—the North America SystemC Users Group—is co-locating again with DVCon on Monday. "SystemC Day" will feature the ever-charming Jim Hogan as the keynote speaker.

If you can't make it to the entire show, the free exhibits-only registration will give you: