Call for Papers is Now Open for User2User 2006!

Abstract submission deadline: Friday, October 28, 2005 at 5:00 pm PDT - Submit an abstract today
Conference: May 3 - 5, 2006Pre-Conference Workshops: May 2, 2006Locations: San Jose Marriott and Convention Center
User2User is the annual Mentor Graphics International User Conference. This highly interactive, in-depth technical conference focuses on the needs of the entire Mentor Graphics user community and draws attendees from around the world. Our primary goal is to deliver immediately useful technical content.
The 2006 conference will again offer a wide range of workshops, technical presentations, and networking opportunities. We encourage you to share your best practices, success stories, and lessons learned.
Submitting an Abstract is Easy
Review the conference technical tracks and suggested topics. Choose one of these topics, a related topic, or come up with your own.
Fill out and submit the abstract submission form with a short (150 words) abstract by October 28, 2005 at 5:00pm PDT (or October 7, 2005 at 5:00pm PDT to be eligible for the early submission awards).
Submit Early - Get a T-shirt and Maybe More!
More than 200 abstracts were submitted for User2User 2005. To give the Conference Advisory Board (CAB) ample time to review submissions, all those submitting abstracts by Friday, October 7, 2005 at 5:00pm PDT, will receive a special edition t-shirt, plus be entered in a drawing to receive one of the following items:
HP PhotoSmart R717 - digital camera
HP iPAQ HX2110 Pocket PC
Hewlett-Packard Apple iPod mini - digital player
Best Paper Awards
A Best Paper award of $1,000 USD will be given in each conference track. Click here for complete details.
For additional information please contact Jen Chausse (Jennifer_chausse@mentor.com or 720-494-1144) or Gordon Sorensen (Gordon_sorensen@mentor.com or 503-685-7757)

Doors 'open' to hardware

Is "open" hardware a disruptive technology that will foster the kind of collaboration that Linux brought to the software world?
Despite the recent demise of one prominent open-source programmable-logic effort, advocates think so. Given the increasingly prohibitive costs of developing hardware from scratch, open hardware is an attractive possibility. But the road is not easy, and new business models will be needed to support it.
At the Electronic Design Processes workshop, Juan-Antonio Carballo, partner in IBM's venture-capital group, made an eloquent pitch for open hardware. "The open-source model is quickly extending from software to hardware, and it will provide a similar swell of collaborative innovation," he said.
The word "open" has various meanings, Carballo explained. It includes, but is not limited to, open source, where specifications or source code are freely available and can be modified by a community of users. It could also mean that the hardware details can be viewed, but not modified. And it does not necessarily mean that open hardware, or designs that contain it, are free of charge.
The open-hardware movement suffered a blow in late April when STMicroelectronics pulled the plug on its Generalized Open Source Programmable Logic initiative. That effort was launched last year in India, with the stated goal of becoming the "Linux of the semiconductor world." While never fully opened to the public, it was seeking "qualified contributors" who would have access to EDA source code and to hardware and software intellectual property.
Still, there are other open-hardware efforts. One (www.power.org) represents a community of developers, tool providers and manufacturers who are developing standards and applications around IBM's Power Architecture. The Power.org mission statement calls for an "open-standard hardware development platform for the electronics industry," with open standards, specifications, guidelines and best practices.
An active community is developing around open-source IP cores. The www.opencores.org Website lists a number of projects, including cores for arithmetic functions, DSP, communications protocols, memory and microprocessors. An OpenTech CD-ROM compiles several hundred open-source EDA software programs and hardware designs.
One pointed question is how to make money from open hardware. The answer may be similar to that in the Linux world: support and value-added services. At the Opencores site, OpenTech creator Jamil Khatib recently launched OpenSupport, a partner program designed to provide commercial support for open-source designs.
- Richard Goering
EE Times