Big year-on-year jump in attendance and exhibitors reaffirms DAC as world’s premier event devoted to the design and design automation of electronic chips to systems

LOUISVILLE, Colo. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — July 30, 2018 — Signaling a major resurgence in systems design, the Design Automation Conference (DAC) reported record levels of engagement and attendance during its 55^th event, held at the Moscone West Center, San Francisco, on June 24-28, 2018.

New energy filled all three floors of Moscone West, with two floors of exhibits and one floor of research presentations. More than 6,000 people attended DAC, nearly 30% more than last year. More than 170 companies exhibited at DAC, about 17% higher than 2017. DAC approved a total of 691 submissions for review, with 47% from North America, 31% from Asia, 20% from Europe and 2% from South America. Of those, 168 were accepted, resulting in an acceptance rate of 24.3%. Another 85 submissions were accepted as work-in-progress (WIP) posters.

After 55 years, DAC continues to be the premier event devoted to the design and design automation of electronic chips to systems, where attendees learn today and create tomorrow.

“We are thrilled with the energy that this year’s event had throughout the exhibits and technical sessions. There is a renaissance movement happening in the design automation ecosystem and DAC is at the core,” said Sharon Hu, General Chair of the 55th DAC. “I’d like to extend my personal gratitude to our sponsors, volunteers, exhibitors, and technical contributors. DAC continues to have the most compelling program for the design automation ecosystem due to their support and involvement.”

The two floors of the 55^th DAC’s exhibits hosted more than 170 companies with 31 first-time exhibitors. Besides individual companies’ exhibits, DAC brought attendees several new areas/activities:

• Design Infrastructure Alley for professionals who manage the HW and SW products and services required by design teams. This area included a dedicated Design-on-Cloud Pavilion featuring presentations from the Design Infrastructure Alley exhibitors and invited companies.
• Smart Systems Square was a centralized exhibit pavilion where engineers could interact with developers, network and platform providers, and verification experts for AI and machine learning applications. It also showcased live demos of the winning entries from the System Design Contest.

The 55^th DAC again showed that DAC is the premier event for top-notch researchers to present their cutting-edge discoveries, the platform for leading field engineers to share their experiences in using EDA tools to tame the ever-growing circuit and system design monsters, and the largest exhibition of EDA tools, software, IP cores, and other related products and services. This unique combination lubricates the pipelines for research to become products and for real-world problems to stimulate research. DAC has been and will continue to be the must-attend event for the design and design automation community.

Preliminary attendance figures for the 2018 DAC in San Francisco shows: