Larry, Larry, Larry!

On Sunday, December 4, Larry Saunders received the Ron Waxman award from the IEEE Design Automation Standards Committee (DASC) for extraordinary service to the DASC.  A back injury kept me from attending the awards ceremony, but it did not keep me from recalling Larry’s seminal work.  Larry was first chair of the 1076 (VHDL) Working Group (WG), and an important proponent of VHDL inside of IBM and the industry in general.  In this post, I’d like to concentrate on the first role: being the initial chair of the 1076 WG.

One thing to keep in mind is that chairing the 1076 group in 1986 was not like chairing EDA standards WG today.  Of course, being a chair of a WG in the present is non-trivial, but it was an enormous task for the 1076-1987 chair, precisely because this was the first EDA WG.  Not only was there a mountain of technical work to be tackled coming both from the DoD VHDL 7.2 groundwork and general industry input, but there was also the need to harness the high-powered technical members of the WG, while keeping the considerable egos checked at the door.  Larry managed to keep the process going monthly face-to-face meeting after monthly meeting in a manner that maintained the technical enthusiasm of the members while delivering a large technically-complex standard on schedule.  Quite a job well done!

There is a personal aspect to this– there is almost always is.  I took over the 1076 WG from Larry after the 1076-1987 standard was published.   There were some new members of the WG, and some original members dropped out, but the WG membership stayed pretty much the same.  My tenure as the 1076 WG chair was considerably less smooth than Larry’s, a development I attribute partially to (a) commercial interests entering the picture (as VHDL simulators started to be developed) and (b) the academic world (especially in Europe) waking up to VHDL after 1987.  But (what I would characterize as) the sometimes raucous meetings of the 1076 WG that eventually produced VHDL 1993 (which was supposed to be VHDL 1992) can be attributed both to my inexperience and to my not being Larry Saunders.  I have learned a lot since then about running standards groups, but I still point to Larry’s tenure as the Chair of 1076-1987 as leadership done right.

Larry gradually reduced his participation in the formal EDA standards world after the initial VHDL work was completed.  He kept his “finger in the pot” promoting VHDL-based design methodologies while he was a design consultant with SEVA (which he co-founded) and with other companies.  Eventually Larry migrated into the IT space, and opened up an IT services company in San Diego, where he is certified in technologies of which I have barely any knowledge.  That is why, when Larry was suggested as a Ron Waxman Award recipient, I thought that it was a great idea.  It is important both for the IEEE DASC to recall the people that helped it become the organization it is today, but also for Larry (even though he is no longer part of the EDA Standards world) to recognize that his work has neither been forgotten nor unappreciated.