In Memory of Steve Chidester

Steve Chidester was a class act.

EDA software can be a cutthroat place, but good luck finding someone who would even think of saying something unkind about Steve.

Known inside Cadence as “Mr. Allegro,” Steve could as well have been called Boomerang for the way over three decades he always returned to the software company. Steve did three stints in all at Cadence, totaling 17 years. He had only recently returned to the company when he passed away from cancer last week at age 55.

While I had met Steve years ago, I didn’t really get to know him until he joined Zuken as head of product marketing in 2010. He was instrumental in getting the IPC-2581 data transfer format off the ground after 40-plus years in the mire.  At Steve’s invitation, I spoke on the topic at Zuken Innovation World that year, although I resisted his repeated urging to present at the company’s user conference in Tokyo. Something about not being fluent in Japanese always held me back.

Little details like that could never stop Steve, however. He was an eternal optimist, never one to get down either on a situation, himself or others. Colleagues tell me that even after learning, in late November, that he had a particularly aggressive form of cancer, he downplayed it, saying it was treatable.

He spoke often of his family — he had nine children plus several grandchildren. That always appealed to me as well, as I like going beyond the regular job-speak and getting to know the folks I work with around the industry.

In an industry filled with generous people, Steve was a particularly kind soul. I will miss him dearly.

Talking Data Transfer at ZDAC

I had the great pleasure of attending Zuken’s ZDAC users group meeting earlier this month in San Antonio at the invitation of Steve Chidester, head of product marketing, and Amy Clements, marketing/sales manager.

Steve and Amy had asked me to present on electronics data transfer, a subject many readers know has long held my interest.

There were about 100 people who attended the event this year, slightly up over last year. All the usual Zuken folks were there: Gerhard Lipski, GM of Zuken Europe; Dave Gullickson, GM of Zuken USA; apps engineer Griff Derryberry; Humair Mandavia; Sandy Jones; and so on. I also was fortunate to meet with Zuken COO Jinya Katsube and CTO Kazuhiro Kariya.

As we’ve reported over at PCDanfF.com, just before ZDAC, Zuken rolled out two new tools: DesignForce, which accelerates prototyping by enabling chip-package-interconnect substrate optimization in a single, native 3D format. The CAD company also released CR-8000, its primary CAD flow. (DesignForce is embedded in CR-8000.) They spent a considerable amount of time discussing those two new tools and their ongoing product roadmap, including CR-5000 Lighting v. 14 next March, which will include a netless router. Zuken says it sees a need to move more information to upstream design, such as system and architecture. The main takeaway was that design makes up 4% of the cost of the process, but it determines 60% of the product cost.

I had about 45 people in my session. There was great interest in the topic, in part because some of the people there have been pushing their companies (RIM, Rockwell Collins, Northrop Grumman, to name but a few) to standardize on IPC-2581. All in all, it was well worth the time.

Also, Zuken is doing a lot in wiring harness design. This is a big market for many EMS companies (especially for military and aerospace work), and there are probably 12 to 15 companies that supply design software for wiring harness. (Some big ones are Mentor, Zuken, Eplan, Autodesk, and IGE-XAO). I didn’t attend the wiring harness design sessions, but it seems the audience was fairly split between the two.

Next year’s event will be held in Newport, CA, around the same time frame (early November).