Excellent day visiting friends at Cadence. Cadence is the largest Electronic Design Automation (EDA) company .. I was there at my friend Anirudh’s invitation giving a company wide talk on the importance of Play and how we can use play to get more students interested in electronics. I was really honored to be asked.. as I’ve been working with Cadence for nearly 30 years.. .. They bought the company Neolinear that was based on my PhD thesis.. and I/we used their tools for all of our big processor chips in IBM..
I got there around 10 and had soem time to catch up with Anirudh.. we did our PhD’s together at CMU.. and then he worked at IBM for many years. Now he’s the CEO of an $87B company. ! He’s such a great guy for that job.. super smart and super approachable. He’s set a great vision for Cadence and made it a fantastic place to work. In fact it was named as the #9 Best Places to work on the Forbes Top 100 places to work and is quickly climbing the WSJ’s 100 Best managed Companies list
That ‘best place to work’ vibe was evident with every person I met and conversation I had through the day.. starting with my hosts Yuki and Emma who got me to the auditorium for my talk.. Anirudh gave a very kind intro then I started talking.. I did my main speil on the importance of Play in engineering (and every) job.. and doubled down on how we can use play to get more students to fall in love with electronics.. Its a topic I beleive in deeply. as often happens, I was ‘in the zone’.. and next thing I know, I was done.. I think it went well.. ..
After the talk I got a chance to talk to several old freinds in the audience. Here are Vinod and Mehmet.
I had a great lunch meeting with the Cadence outreach folks. Nicole and Ben.
After lunch we had a treat. We heard a great talk from my old friend Jason Cong who is a Distinguished Prof at UCLA (and an all around wonderful person) . It was great getting to see him if only for a few minutes.
After the talks of the day were over, we all went to the HQ building for a really fun ‘casino night’.. there was great food, casino gambing for pros.. and a great opportunity to soak up more to eh ‘Best Places too Work’ vibe. I met so man great people !!!!
Got a pic with my two wonderful Hosts.. Yuki and Emma.
After the party I headed back tot he hotel… and was just about to order dinner when all the lights went out.. I’d thought it was just a problem with the hotel restaurant.. then I realized it was the whole hotel.. no wait.. it was the whole block.. Actually it was a big chunk of the city !>> I walked around the neighborhood .. it was fun and kind of spooky !
That also mean no power for elevators, no power for AC (It was 97 today).. and no lights in the room…
no problem there.. I have been working on some led bling for our burning man crew… I reprogrammed them to be mood lighting which let me pack..
Great day.. Thank you cadence !
night all, night sam
-me