On the heels of my March 9, 2007 blog entry, lamenting the passing of two pioneers in MCAD/CAE and EDA, respectively, comes the news of the passing of John Backus at age 82, the creator of FORTRAN. As the early engineers and programmers of my generation recall, FORTRAN was among the first "high level computer programming languages" that allowed us to avoid machine coding. Many’s the late night of university thesis research and related software development, when we gave thanks to Mr. Backus of IBM.

But today I want to depart from MCAD and EDA briefly, to comment on the advent of Spring, the rising awareness of climate change, and finally doing something about it!

For example, while Applied Materials here in Silicon Valley sports over a thousand seats of commercial MCAD/CAE software, employing “virtual prototyping” to help design semiconductor manufacturing equipment, the company made other news on March 17, 2007, by announcing at its annual shareholders meeting that it would begin setting up “the...

The open standard which has been under development was announced today. The industry review period runs till May 21st.

In my first blog item on March 2, 2007, I indicated that topics related to both MCAD/MCAE and EDA would occasionally be mentioned in future blog entries. In reflecting on the current state of these two related industries, I realized that two authentic pioneers who helped advance the state-of-the-art were lost to us in recent months. Indeed, Dr. Jason R. Lemon and Dr. A. Richard Newton both passed away within a week of each other as 2006 ended and 2007 began.Dr. Jason R. Lemon was a bona fide pioneer in Mechanical Computer Aided Engineering (MCAE). Still serving as CEO of International TechneGroup Incorporated (ITI), Milford, OH, Dr. Lemon passed away on December 27, 2006 after a decades-long battle with cancer. He was 71 years old. In addition to starting ITI in 1983, Dr. Lemon earlier founded Structural Dynamics Research Corporation (SDRC) in 1967, as an outgrowth of his work at the University of Cincinnati. SDRC was ultimately merged with UGS in 2001 and of course, SDRC technology and many SDRC people still...

It's a pleasure to have become part of the Cyon Research team, as of the end of February 2007. For those who may have missed the press release, you may go to:http://cyonresearch.com/News/tabid/58/newsid382/99/mid/382/Cyon-Research-Adds-Distinguished-Analyst/Default.aspxIn the weeks and months ahead, I will try to share some thoughts that relate to COFES and COFES attendees. While issues surrounding MCAD and MCAE will naturally arise, I may also introduce topics from the world of Electronic Design Automation (EDA), since both mechanical and electronics are parts of my corporate and consulting backgrounds. I must confess that most of my experience these days focuses on business, management and marketing issues related to these disciplines, rather than technical details surrounding software and hardware features and functions. For example, you might take a look at the latest EDA Industry Commentary posted on EDAcafe:http://www10.edacafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?section=Commentary&articleid=362250&printerfriendly=1While...