ARM Community: Why You Belong at Chip Design Day at ARM’s Techcon - ARM Community

When you visit the ARM Technology Conference (Techcon) main web page, you’ll notice two helpful tools: one to build your own custom schedule, and a second to help you create an attendance justification letter for your boss. I’m going to offer my suggestions for your schedule on November 9 (Chip Design Day).

Justifications: important meetings, save future design time and networking
I can also help with boss justification:
Paper: I’ve found that the most effective technique is to say “But I have a paper there! I have to go”. If you haven’t already used that for Techcon it’s a bit late now, so here are some alternatives:
Meetings: First, if travel is required, mention that important customer/supplier/division X will be there (or is just next door since it’s in Silicon Valley) and you’ll have time to drop by, plus airfares and hotel rates are cheap.
Save future work time: You’ll also need to mention that the time it takes out of your busy schedule is nothing compared to the time you’ll save in the coming weeks and months with your newfound knowledge. There’s plenty of content at the conference, and we’ll get to that later.
Networking: This is the most important justification. Everyone you meet at Techcon – fellow engineers, researchers, executives, and yes even marketing, has some piece of information you can use. Your mission is to find it. Ask questions at the presentations, talk to people in the exhibit hall, at lunch, on the escalators, in the coffee lineup – you get the idea.

My favorite picks for Techcon: tough choices!
So, what should you see? The good news is that there’s a lot to choose from. The bad news is that parallel sessions mean you won’t be able to see everything.

Keynotes: You should definitely see the keynotes from Jensen Tjeng at Marvell on industry trends and Gary Patton of IBM on 20nm technology. After that, the choice depends on which aspects of chip design interest you the most.

10:30 options: At 10:30 you have seven choices, ranging from gigahertz processor implementation with Rob Lipsey and Andrew Lambert to low power standard cells and memory with Wolfgang Helfricht to multi-OS on multicore with Shay Benchorin.

11:30 options: At 11:30 you can choose from six talks, including SoC time-to-volume with Srinivas Nori, hardware/software co-verification with Per Edstrom, and Design for Reliability with Alvin Chen.

2:00 options: After lunch, Chris Turner will be discussing Energy efficient architectures for 4G/LTE phones using Cortex™-R, or KK Lin’s talk on Green ICs is a good alternative, not to mention one of four other choices.

3:00 options: Quality: At 3pm green tech gives way to quality: your five choices include physical IP quality assurance with Mark Brass and Brent Dichter, finding systematic defects with production tests with Geir Eide, or at a higher level, QOS for HD multimedia with Ashley Stevens.

4:00 options: Finally, at 4pm you have six more choices, ranging from the changing nature of chip design (the growing cost of wires with Jonah Probell) to software-driven power/performance characterization with Andy Ladd, through chip implementation, transistor stress and more.

Fireside chat: To round out your day at 5pm, stop by the Cadence and ARM Fireside chat where John Bruggeman and Simon Segars are discussing the evolving Electronics industry. There are bound to say something controversial and interesting, although I’m willing to bet there won’t be an actual fire there.

Juggling the options: I’m not sure I can pick just one in each time slot myself. Maybe I’ll try peeking in the door at the back of a couple of rooms. That sometimes works if you want to see two at once, but now that I’ve mentioned it they’ll probably close the doors.

Don’t miss the expo: Besides all that, don’t forget to squeeze in a visit to the table top exhibits area. There will also be wireless access to keep you connected, but your boss doesn’t need to know that.

Never miss the food: There’s lunch too – never miss lunch. And once you’re done chatting by the fireside, don’t forget the reception at 5:45 pm. The food is usually good and you often get some of the best pieces of info at the end of a long day of technical talks when everyone is tired and the beer is free.

50% Discount for Technical Sessions with ARM50
And the best news of all, now you can attend them for less! ARM and EE Times are offering a special 50% discount on the cost to attend the technical conferences at this year’s Techcon. To take advantage of this special opportunity please use the promo code – ARM50 when registering.

Attend ONE Technical Session for FREE
If you are interested in attending one technical class in addition to all the free industry sessions and expos, ARM and EE Times are offering free admission with code ONE. Either way, don’t miss the opportunity to fine tune your design skills at this year’s Techcon.

Find me: So it’s going to be a very busy day packed with all kinds of technology. But don’t forget the networking! I’ll be there and would be happy to chat. I’m the nerdy looking engineer guy. OK, the tall one, with a beard. Well, you’ll figure it out. And once Chip Design Day is over there are still two more days of Techcon with the System and Software Design Conference, but you can check out other blog posts about that!

Rob Aitken, ARM Fellow, spends his days in the technology trenches with nanometer scale devices and picosecond timing, looking at the circuits that eventually get put together to make smart phones or mildly clever toasters. He is a fan of all aspects of chip design, from transistors on up, and also of the various tools and methods that enable efficient, productive and successful design and manufacturing.

Shortlink to this post: http://bit.ly/aYWIJD