Thursday, July 27, 5:48 AM

DAC Scoop -- Cadence pulls out of DAC Exhibits for next year

According to some sources, it's rumored that in a surprise move last night,
Cadence declined to select any floor space during the Wednesday annual
DAC meeting where all the EDA vendors select their booth position for next
year's upcoming 2007 DAC in San Diego.  The DAC floor space selection
process is a system where all the EDA vendors line up to chose this real
estate based on their seniority as prior DAC exhibitors and their size as
a business.  In effect, this is pretty much Cadence backing out of DAC
altogether (as far as exhibiting is concerned) because now all of next
year's prime DAC floor space is already gone.

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Friday, July 28, 9:06 AM

I got confirmation that Cadence had NOT selected any foor space whatsoever
at the Wednesday DAC Space Selection Meeting.  Given the recent history of
Cadence management trying to every slowly pull customers away from the open
DAC environment and into a more marketing-controlled Cadence-only offsite
setting (a la the Intel Developer Forum that Mike Fister & Co. is so at
home with) it's uncertain if this signals a policy where Cadence employees
will be slowly pulling out of the DAC volunteer and committee positions
they currently hold to instead focus on the "CDN Live" conferences which
Cadence Marketing heavily promotes.

It's hard to tell.  For the past 2 years, every time I'd talk to Cadence
about it, they'd give great lipservice to DAC, but they'd also be quietly
doing these get-customers-off-the-DAC-floor-and-into-a-nearby-hotel stunts.
Last year Cadence siphoned off a number of DAC floor attendees into the
nearby Hilton.  This year Cadence rented the Four Seasons Hotel (2 blocks
away from the DAC Moscone Center) and held a "Technology On Tour" show.
It's hard to tell what these Cadence guys are really doing until they
actually do it.