The 2022 Kaufman Dinner

On May 12th, it was the Kaufman Award Ceremony and Banquet at which Cadence's CEO Anirudh Devgan was awarded the 2021 Phil Kaufman Award. Yes, I know it is 2022. Normally the award dinner is held late in the year, but for Covid-reasons, it was postponed first until March and then until May. But it took place and was in-person in the Glasshouse in downtown San Jose. I met a lot of people face-to-face who I had not seen for over two years. If the ESD Alliance CEO Outlook Panel had not taken place recently (see my post?ESD Alliance CEO Outlook 2022) then it would be many more, but a good cross-section of the EDA and IP industries were present at both events. By the way, the 2020 Kaufman Award was not...er...awarded

KT Moore, Cadence's VP Corporate Marketing (so I'm in his organization), was the Master of Ceremonies. We drank wine and ate hors d'oeuvres for an hour before sitting down to dinner. The actual ceremony began while we were eating, so while I got to enjoy my salad, much of my halibut went to waste since I was busy typing and photographing. The sacrifices that I have to make for my readers!

Lip-Bu Tan

First up was Lip-Bu Tan, until last December Cadence's CEO before Anirudh took over. He told the story of recruiting Anirudh to join Cadence and then persuading him to move from Texas to California. "Sorry, but you'll have to pay more tax."

Ron Rohrer

The first person to speak (after we got the standard pitches for the ESD Aliiance and for CEDA, the two organizations that sponsor the award) was Ron Rohrer. He was Anirudh's Ph.D. supervisor at Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU) starting in 1989. For Anirudh's own perspective on arriving in the US in the middle of winter to go to CMU, see my post?Anirudh Recognized with the 2021 Phil Kaufman Award. Anirudh's Ph.D. was on ultra-fast circuit simulation. In fact, Anirudh sort of parallelized SPICE, something that Ron considered was impossible. I believe that even today, some of the ideas in that thesis show up in products like Voltus and Clarity.

Read more...