There is a new edition of Hennessy and Patterson's book Computer Architecture: A Quantative Approach out. The 5th edition.

Every year, Wright Williams & Kelly, Inc. (WWK) conducts a survey on equipment and timing of various features in the semiconductor industry. The results from last year's survey cover what features survey respondents expected to be in production use this year, 2012: Double patterning Through Silicon Vias (TSV) Through Silicon Vias – Cu Fill HiK Gate (HfO2, ZrO2, etc.) Equipment suppliers using remote diagnostic capability Manufacturing capacity, utilization and cycle time simulation Implementation of 300mm prime advances

And they also look at technologies that have been on the horizon for a long time and look llike they will stay on the horizon for longer. These technologies are not expected to be in production before 2015 or later: 193 high index immersion lithography Direct write EUV lithography Imprint lithography

Two more deadlines for this years DAC are coming up in March. And don't forget the Marie Pistilli Women in EDA Achievement Award is still on March 9th.

The Work-in-progress (WIP) track allows researchers to get early feedback and present early results in poster sessions during DAC (which, I don't need to tell you, I hope, is at Moscone Center in San Francisco from June 3rd to 7th). The deadline for submission is March 12th 2012 (at 5pm Mountain Time if you want to go right to the wire). All the details including the application process are on this website here.

The EDAC Emerging Companies Comittee (would that be the EDACECC?) is organizing a panel session one evening at DVCon. It is Monday February 27th from 6pm to 8.30pm. I don't yet have a room but it will be at the DoubleTree Hotel where DVCon is being held.

EDA companies often address hardware/software co-design from a hardware point of view as if the software somehow is going to be put together once the chip is available, and is a relatively small part of the design of the system (real men design chips). But, in fact, software is often much longer lasting than any individual chips. Much of the software in your phone may be a decade old and running on the fifth or sixth iteration of the hardware. Apple's iOS alone ran first on a Samsung chip, and then Apple's own A4 and A5 chips, for example. The result is that hardware and software teams look at the importance of software and software development methodology very differently.

It is interesting watching as changes in technology bring giants to their knees. Far and away the best book on the subject is Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma. If you haven't read it then it is highly recommended. Very readable and very convincing. As close as a business book gets to being a page-turner.

There seems to be lots of stuff on the interwebs at the moment about booth-babes. Hey, you can be intellectual and even read about them in The Economist. And one here on a site that follows Apple called Tidbits (and yes, despite the topic, that really is a "d") talking about MacWorld/iWorld. There was some controversy at CES last month that the BBC reported on (video). As usual, there is scope for playing on the silicon/silicone connection (or, sometimes, I think people really don't know the difference).