Embedded Systems Conference 2009

Browsing through the events listed on the conference agenda, I was intrigued to see a session titled- "Who's taking over whom- Is EDA moving into embedded or embedded into EDA? The first time this debate was held was many years ago at a DAC conference. That panel too had an equally intriguing title- Embedded and EDA are two ships passing in the night.

Wind River's former CEO Jerry Fidler was on that panel and seemed to hold the view that they were indeed ships passing in the night. As I remember, a certain EDA company on that panel agreed with Jerry and suggested that EDA should stay out of software. However, there were a few dissenters, primarily users that obviously saw a convergence course rather than parallel paths. Their view was that given the growing importance of software in product design and development as well as the emergence of ESL design methods and technologies, EDA and embedded software would have to align more closely and build more bridges.

It would appear that they were right and though it has taken several years to get to this point, given the way the panel title has been framed at ESC 2009, the ships are finally on an intercept course and now its time to talk about control issues.