I was looking at the upcoming DAC program and, to my surprize, I saw that
the DAC CEO panel had returned.  Wow!  The last time DAC had a CEO panel
was when that sleazeball Mike Fister first took over Cadence in 2004.

That was 5 years ago and I remember it as one of those bland, politically
correct, discuss nothing event.  The rumor that I had heard at the time
was that Fister would only do the panel only if ALL the questions were
given to him ahead of time and "safe".  The result was a very yawnable
discussion on milquetoast topics like "where does innovation come from?".

That 2004 DAC CEO panel was so brutally dull, nobody said a word when the
DAC CEO panel had disppeared the following year in 2005.

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The double surprize this year is the DAC CEO panel is back PLUS exactly
who's on it:
                 Aart de Geus, CEO of Synopsys
                 Wally Rhines, CEO of Mentor
                   Lip Bu Tan, CEO of Cadence

Or perhaps I should correct myself and say who's been allowed on the panel
(and how) and who's NOT allowed on the panel.

Historically the CEOs were usually listed by order of market cap; but for
some reason Lip Bu Tan is not listed second, but third???  Huh?

And historically the DAC CEO panel was the top 5 or 6 EDA CEOs.  But this
year they oddly cut it off at

              Rajeev Madhavan, CEO of Magma

even though with most EDA customers Magma's been a legitimate 12 year 
player in the P&R space.  LAVA made $160 million in 2008.  You'd think
that alone would have qualified Rajeev for the panel, but it didn't.

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How I understood the politics behind these bigwig CEO panels was that:

      1. Aart absolutely refused to show if Rajeev was there,
and
      2. Wally and Cadence won't show if Aart's not there.

In short, Aart (more or less) calls the shots on EDA CEO panels and it
then boiled down to one simple sentence -- Rajeev need not apply.

These were the "rules" during the years Aart intensely hated Rajeev.

But for a while there, it appeared that some sort of detente had happened
between Aart and Rajeev.  After the lawsuit where Synopsys tried to crush
Magma had failed (2004-2007), they both seemed to play nice together.
Instead of throwing mud at each other with cries of "Injustice!" they
put out a joint happy-happy press release ending the lawsuit.  Hell, after
years of being EDAC's embarrassing "conspicuous missing board member",
EDAC even finally relented and let Rajeev on its board in 2008!

So for a while there it seemed Aart had found a way to tolerate Rajeev.

But add Magma's recent financial troubles to the mix plus the surprize that
Rajeev is not on the upcoming DAC CEO panel tells me both the "rules" and
Aart's personal cold war against Rajeev are back on.  Voltaire was right.
"The more things change, the more things stay the same."

    - John Cooley
      DeepChip.com                               Holliston, MA

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                   ( A response a few days later )

From: [ Cookie Monster ]
To: John Cooley <jcooley=user domain=zeroskew not mom>

Hi, John,

Keep me anon.

This reply brought to you by the letters G, R, and T: the participants in
the DAC CEO panel are listed in alphabetical order.

    - [ Cookie Monster ]

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From: John Cooley <jcooley=user domain=zeroskew not mom>
To: [ Cookie Monster ]

Hey, "Cookie",

Go check out any of the 8 panels in the official DAC program or any of
the 19 panels in the DAC Pavillion program -- not ONE of them has its
panelists in any form of alphabetical order.

Not alphabetical by first name, not by last name, nor by company name.

Not one.

Yet this is the one year they decided to not list by Market Cap and by
alphabetical order instead?  And only just for the CEO panel alone???

I doubt it.

    - John Cooley
      DeepChip.com                               Holliston, MA