Next week, specifically February 22 to 25, is a special time for those who have the responsibility to verify electronics designs or to develop tools to enable or improve such verification. DVCon, the annual conference dedicated to design verification will be held at the Double Tree hotel in San Jose. In addition to a strong program of technical papers, and tools vendors exhibits, the conference will also provide networking opportunities, a panel of industry leaders, tutorials, co-located events, a luncheon celebrating Accellera, the sponsor of DVCon, tenth anniversary, and even a panel designed to give you pointers should you wish to start your own EDA company.

As usual the exhibits will be open in the afternoon of Tuesday and Wednesday. They are an optimum way of seeing most of the EDA vendors that offer verification tools, from logic simulator to formal tools, to emulation and acceleration vendors.

If you have not heard Li-Bu Tan, CEO of Cadence, then attend the keynote Speech on Tuesday from 2 to 3 o' clock. The title of his speech is "Breaking Through the Efficiency Barrier", something we all wish we could do routinely.

The panel on Wednesday afternoon has the provocative title "What Keeps You Up at Night?". I am told it will not be about horror movies or books, and not about sex or B movies either. But you are likely to hear descriptions of challenging verification issues that were addressed or that are likely to be addressed soon.

Due to the increased interest in tutorials, DVCon will present tutorials Monday and Tuesday. On Monday you can choose from three tutorials. One on VMM, one on TLM 2.0, and one on formal verification using SVA. Four tutorials are offered on TUesday: VIP Interoperability Best Practices, FPGA-based Rapid Prototyping, OVM Advanced Applications, and A step-by-step Guide to Advanced Verification.

As it has been its behavior in the past few years, OSCI will hold its SystemC Day on Monday, February 22, in conjunction with DVCon. Information about the event, always well attended, can be found at www.systemc.org.

The Accellera birthday luncheon will take place on Tuesday. A perfect opportunity to join me in celebrating Accellera and its numerous and distinguished achievements in our industry.

For those of you who desire to taste the high and lows of entrepreneurship Tuesday, February 23rd at 6:30 PM there will be an interactive workshop with Jim Hogan and Paul McLellan. Come to this workshop and hear how to get a startup going in EDA. Get Jim and Paul’s take on what areas in EDA and IP are potentially successful -- and those areas that won't yield a reasonable return on your efforts. They both see lucrative opportunities in EDA, so get their money before they can change their minds.

Chances are that if you are in verification and will not be at DVCon, you will be at a disadvantage, since the attendees will certainly have found something to improve their professional standing.