Dr Anirudh Devgan honoured by EDA industry

Dr Anirudh Devgan, President and CEO of Cadence Design Systems, has been selected to receive the 2021 Phil Kaufman Award for his extensive contributions to electronic design automation (EDA).

The Phil Kaufman Award honours individuals who have had a demonstrable impact on the field of electronic system design through technology innovations, education/mentoring, or business or industry leadership. The award was established as a tribute to Phil Kaufman, the late industry pioneer who turned innovative technologies into commercial businesses that have benefited electronic designers, and is presented annually by the Electronic System Design Alliance (ESD Alliance) and the IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA).

Dr Devgan is widely recognised as a leading authority in parallel and distributed computing and has made a broad impact in fields ranging from circuit simulation to statistical design and optimisation, physical design and signoff, verification and hardware platforms, and system design and analysis. His groundbreaking contributions include not just the development of algorithms, but also successfully bringing to market commercial solutions that have gained widespread customer adoption throughout the industry.

Dr Devgan began his career at IBM Research in 1994. His work at IBM on EDA algorithms and design optimisation techniques contributed to IBM’s leadership in the 1990s and 2000s in high-performance microprocessor and server designs. He joined Magma Design Automation in 2005 as a key member of its Executive Management Team and General Manager of the Custom Design Business Unit. He initiated and brought to market multiple new products in the areas of circuit simulation, analog mixed-signal design, physical verification, library characterisation and 3D extraction among others.

At Cadence, Dr Devgan has driven the re-architecture and revamping of its product lines, notably the entire suite of digital and signoff tools, as well as its functional and mixed-signal simulation solutions. He established Cadence’s Intelligent System Design strategy and is driving breakthrough advancements in cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and system innovation. His leadership and contributions have resulted in a significant increase in Cadence’s revenue, profitability and market capitalisation as well as in the overall customer and market adoption of its solutions.

“Anirudh has a truly rare combination of widely recognised research excellence, exceptional business impact and results, and outstanding leadership in the EDA industry,” said Lip-Bu Tan, former CEO and now Executive Chairman of Cadence, who nominated Dr Devgan for this honour. “Anirudh’s overall contributions during his career spanning Carnegie Mellon, IBM, Magma and Cadence have significantly advanced the industry.”

“On behalf of the ESD Alliance, I would like to congratulate Anirudh on receiving the 2021 Phil Kaufman award,” added Simon Segars, ESD Alliance Chairman and CEO of Arm Holdings. “His contributions in technical innovation have been foundational to bringing the EDA industry into the modern parallel and cloud computing era. Anirudh’s impact on the industry is well recognised and celebrated with this distinguished honour.”

The award ceremony will be held on 10 March in San Jose, California.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/hobbitfoot

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