According to the 350 customers in attendance at the seventh annual SNUG Boston, this year's technical program was the best ever. Synopsys users, representing over 100 companies from as far away as Europe and India, gathered on September 27-28, at the Marriott Hotel in Newton, MA, to engage in two full days of technical sessions.

To kick-off SNUG Boston 2005, SNUG Technical Chair, Erich Whitney, introduced Synopsys CEO Aart de Geus, who delivered the keynote speech to a standing-room-only audience. During the two-day conference, attendees were able to view 28 user presentations, 16 Synopsys tutorials and six R&D panels. New this year, a management session titled, “Tackling Challenges of the IC Design Manager,” attracted IC design managers interested in learning about some of the topics today's managers wrestle with — improving flow productivity and managing power issues.

The Authors' Poster Session allowed attendees to connect one-on-one with SNUG authors in a relaxed setting. This session was so popular that many users continued their discussions long after the session formally ended.

At Synopsys Night, attendees had the opportunity to “talk shop” with Synopsys staff and executives and hear about Synopsys' hot new technology. During Synopsys Night, the following “Technical Committee” and “Best Paper” award winners were announced:

1st Place Best Paper
"Optimizing the Development of a Random-Constrained Self-Checking Verification Environment by Using a Supported Methodology"
by Nancy Pratt, IBM Systems & Technology Group and Quinn Canfield, Synopsys

2nd Place Best Paper
"A Unique Functional Coverage Flow using SystemVerilog and NTB"
by Richard Raimi, ARM and Dennis Strouphauer, Synopsys

3rd Place Best Paper
"Solving Verilog X-Issues by Sequentially Comparing a Design with Itself —You'll Never Trust Unix Diff Again"
by Mike Turpin, ARM

Technical Committee Award
"Leveraging Assertion Based Verification by using Magellan"
by Peter Jensen and Jacob Andersen, SyoSil Consulting

Technical Committee Award – Honorable Mention
"Optimizing the Development of a Random-Constrained Self-Checking Verification Environment by Using a Supported Methodology"
by Nancy Pratt, IBM Systems & Technology Group and Quinn Canfield, Synopsys

Technical Committee Award – Honorable Mention
”Analyzing Clock Trees”
by Jeff Shabel, QUALCOMM

Best First-Time Presenter
”Analyzing Clock Trees”
by Jeff Shabel, QUALCOMM

SNUG Boston would not be complete without a performance from SNUG's own house band, “Blues Compiler.” The band, featuring Aart on guitar, did not disappoint, delivering a full set of rock'n'roll and blues favorites.

To view all SNUG Boston 2005 user papers, presentations and tutorials, please visit the SNUG papers library at http://www.snug-universal.org/papers/papers.htm

"Second Place Best Paper" winner, Richard Raimi of ARM, got a little support from his family (pictured). Also pictured are co-author, Dennis Strouphauer of Synopsys, and Erich Whitney.

Mike Turpin of ARM accepted
"Third Place Best Paper" honors.

Jeff Shabel of QUALCOMM won two awards - "Technical Committee Award - Honorable Mention" and "Best First-Time Presenter".