DVClub Austin - May 20, 2026, Harry Foster Presenting

We are very happy to announce a VERY SPECIAL Austin DVClub Event - Not to be missed! Mark your calendar for May 20th, 2026, and register now. This event will have all the usual great elements: Free food, compelling presentation by Harry Foster (Chief Scientist for Verification at Siemens), and time for great networking. The other main event is a Retirement Send-off for Kelly Larson, DVClub's Very First Presenter, DVClub Austin & Fort Collins Host, and DVClub North America Principal! The DVClub Community owes him a huge debt of gratitude for all that he has done!

• 11:30am — Doors Open / Networking
• 12:00pm — Lunch / Retirement Send-off for Kelly Larson / Presentation by Harry Foster
• 1:30pm — Networking

Presentation - Harry Foster (Siemens Digital Industries Software)

" The End of Orthogonalization: Verification in the Semiconductor Convergence Era"

Modern semiconductor systems no longer obey the clean abstraction boundaries that defined the past three decades of chip design. Chiplets, 3DIC packaging, hybrid bonding, photonics, and near-memory compute are collapsing the separation between logical behavior, physical effects, software workloads, and system integration.

As a result, verification is expanding from checking digital correctness to validating complex, cross-domain system behavior. Thermal gradients affect timing, workloads influence memory coherency, and physical effects such as mechanical stress in stacked dies can impact functional behavior.

This talk examines what this convergence means for verification engineers. We’ll discuss the emerging role of digital twins, lifecycle verification for software-defined products, and how agentic AI may soon orchestrate the entire verification workflow. The future of semiconductors will be shaped not just by architecture—but by how effectively we verify systems whose boundaries are constantly shifting.

Harry Foster is the Chief Scientist for Verification at Siemens Digital Industries Software and the Co-Founder and Executive Editor of the Verification Academy. He served as the General Chair of the 2021 Design Automation Conference (DAC) and is currently serving as a Past Chair. Harry has received the Accellera Technical Excellence Award for his contributions to assertion-based verification standards, the 2022 ACM Distinguished Service Award, and the 2022 IEEE CEDA Outstanding Service Award. Harry has published multiple technical books and papers focused on advanced functional verification.

Register now and please share with your colleagues!

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