By Russ Henke on 4/28/2007 6:08 AM

Recent blog entries in this space have dealt with headlines in the news that affect the daily lives of Americans in particular, and many more people everywhere. The latest news has not been encouraging. Here are several more recent news items for readers’ consideration:- The worst economic growth in four years is raising concern that troubles in the US housing market will spread and throw the country into a recession before the year is out. The economy practically crawled at a 1.3% pace in the opening quarter of 2007, the US Commerce Department reported on April 27. The reading on gross domestic product in Q1 2007 was the weakest since the 1.2% pace in Q1 2003, right before the US-led invasion of IRAQ. The 1.3% GDP growth in Q1 2007 was far weaker than the already-sluggish 2.5% rate in Q4 2006. The country’s bloated trade deficit alone shaved a half-percent off the Q1 GDP. These reports come as George W. Bush continues to suffer from mediocre poll ratings from the public on his economic stewardship.- Even though...

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By Russ Henke on 4/17/2007 9:27 AM

In the blog entry here on April 14, the followingparagraph was included:   On April 13, the Labor Department's Producer Price   Index came in flat for March 2007, an encouraging   result if one does not eat food or buy gasoline or   use electricity. However, including the real world   impacts of energy and food, wholesale prices rose   another full percent in March, following an even   larger 1.3% rise in February.Readers may be interested in these additional facts:Yesterday, April 16, the Consumer Price Index results for March were announced. Consumer prices shot up by the largest amount in nearly a year, driven by huge increases in the cost of gasoline and other energy products.The Consumer Price Index rose 0.6% in March, the biggest increase since April of 2006. Energy prices surged by 5.9% last month, the largest one-month increase since September 2005, when Hurricane Katrina shut down Gulf Coast refineries.The rise in inflation ate into workers’ paychecks, with relative weekly earnings declining in March....

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By Russ Henke on 4/14/2007 8:55 AM

One week ago, this space was devoted to just-released reports on relatively weak job creation in the US. Further, what new jobs there are, are arguably in service sectors that do not create real US wealth and productivity. On the other hand, the US Manufacturing Sector has been losing jobs for nine consecutive months. The April 7 blog entry ended with some economists suggesting that a US recession was nearly 50% likely soon.So in the interest of staying “fair and balanced”, this week was devoted to trying to find some good economic or political news to convey. Alas, here’s just a sampling of the many new reports from the last 7 days:The US dollar traded near a record low against the Euro on April 13, 2007. The Euro bought $1.3547 -- its highest level since January 2005, and only a cent short of its all-time high from December 2004 of $1.3667. (Kiss that new 2008 C-Class Mercedes goodbye!).On April 13, the Labor Department's Producer Price Index came in flat for March 2007, an encouraging result if one does not...

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By Russ Henke on 4/7/2007 9:26 AM

Yesterday, April 6, 2007, the US Labor Department reported that 180,000 new jobs were added to non-farm US payrolls in March. This figure elevated the average number of new jobs added per month in Q1 2007 to 151,000. While 151,00 per month may seem large, and it is compared to the dismal record over the last six years, 151,000 per month does not even keep pace with the need for new jobs generated by normal US population growth. Another concern, of course, is just where the jobs are being added. For example, in March, 75% of the new jobs were tallied in services sectors: Retailers added 36,000; educational & health care services expanded by 54,000; leisure & hospitality services picked up 21,000, while the government itself added 23,000. These services sectors are not where the real wealth and productivity of the nation are created. Indeed, the US Manufacturing Sector, where real national wealth is created, not only lost 16,000 jobs in March, but also March was the ninth consecutive month of manufacturing job losses!...

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By Russ Henke on 3/31/2007 10:04 AM

In my first Cyon blog entry on March 2, 2007, I mentioned that I would occasionally offer comments on engineering software, particularly for Mechanical CAD (MCAD) and Electronic Design Automation (EDA). On March 9, the blog entry related to the recent passing of pioneers in MCAD and EDA. Today it might be useful to take a moment to compare these two software industries in general, especially the oligopolies that seem to dominate each.In MCAD, one usually identifies four vendor companies whose worldwide revenues now make up a huge percentage of the entire MCAD software industry: Autodesk, Dassault Systemes, UGS and PTC. Each enjoys reported annual sales near or well-above one billion U.S. dollars. In EDA, observers usually refer to the “Big 3” vendors: Cadence, Synopsys and Mentor Graphics. Both Cadence and Synopsys revenues are well over a billion dollars per year each, while Mentor Graphics comes in around $800 million. The Big 3 in EDA collectively represent a remarkably high percentage of total EDA industry...

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By Russ Henke on 3/22/2007 3:26 AM

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...

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By Russ Henke on 3/9/2007 12:00 PM

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...

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By Russ Henke on 3/2/2007 6:15 AM

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...

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