In the past 15 years, the industry has seen four generations of process technology and radical changes in physical design methods and verification sophistication, yet the front-end design team has enjoyed a largely isolated lifestyle through all of the turmoil. Well, if that is really true, what has changed? In the alternative, what has not changed that really ought to have changed? These are some of the questions that the panel will addressing in what will likely be a lively forum.

Ann Steffora Mutschler Senior Editor, Electronic News and Electronic Business Reed Business Information

Ms. Steffora Mutschler works for Electronic News and Electronic Business, covering electronic design automation, capital equipment, design and manufacturing trends, and technology innovation. Ms. Steffora Mutschler has been a professional journalist since 1992 and has written for publications such as EDAVision, EDACafe.com, and VARBusiness. Her articles have appeared in publications around the world.

Steve Carlson Vice President of Product Marketing, Digital Implementation Cadence Design Systems

Mr. Carlson is focused on marketing the solution front-end digital design teams. He joined Cadence in April 2003 via the Get2Chip acquisition, where he was the vice president of marketing. Prior to Get2Chip, Mr. Carlson was the chief executive officer of Tharas Systems, a hardware acceleration company. He has also held various management positions at Escalade, LSI Logic, United Technologies, and Synopsys. At Synopsys, he was a part of the original design compiler technical team responsible for timing analysis and optimization.

Brendan Farley Chief Technology Officer Silicon and Software Systems

Mr. Farley provides technology leadership for S3's leading-edge SoC design services and mixed-signal IP business. He is a regular speaker at semiconductor industry events, presenting on the technical and commercial issues associated with implementing complex SoCs at the 90 nm and 65 nm process technology nodes. As a mixed-signal engineer at S3, he has directed IC developments in the automotive sector, including ABS electronics and contactless angle measurement. He specialized in the design of high-performance CMOS data converters, collaborating with Philips Research on advanced architectures. Mr. Farley founded S3's mixed-signal IP business in 2000.

Gagan Gupta Director, Multimedia Solutions and Senior Member, ARC Worldwide Solution Architect Team ARC International

Mr. Gupta is responsible for product planning and definition of ARC’s configurable processors and architecture. Previously he had worked at Futurewei Technologies and LSI Logic where he has architected and microarchitected high performance processors. Mr. Gupta has published papers and holds several patents in the field of computer architecture. He has a M.S. degree in computer science from Arizona State University.

Paul Platt Vice President, Design Services IDT

Mr. Platt is responsible for all aspects of site operations for the IDT Atlanta design center. Additionally, he manages the IDT design automation and place and route groups. Mr. Platt also spearheads the ongoing improvement of internal design-sharing information by constantly refining the company's unified corporate design flow, information flow, and interaction process among the IDT design groups. He joined IDT in 1994 with the charter of opening the company's first remote design center, in Atlanta, where he served as director.

Kazu Yamada Vice President and General Manager NEC Electronics America

As vice president of the Custom SoC Solutions strategic business unit (SBU) for NEC Electronics America, Mr. Yamada reports directly to president and chief executive officer Yuichi Kawakami and is responsible for overseeing the company’s custom ASIC-related business. In his 25-plus years with NEC companies, Mr. Yamada has held a number of key positions in marketing and engineering, including two most recent posts as associate vice president of the Technology Foundation Operations Unit (2004–2005) and general manager of the Technology Foundation Division (2002–2004) for NEC Electronics Corporation in Japan. Mr. Yamada joined NEC Corporation in 1978 as a circuit designer of bipolar devices for consumer applications.