Archive → June, 2010
EDA360 – A Silicon System Vision we must Build Upon
Cadence began publicizing the EDA360 vision back in April of this year and since that time there has been a fair share of discussion, both negative and positive comments; and certainly some confusion. I was definitely a member of the confused and negative camp; that is until I spent enough time to really research and understand what this vision was trying to tell us.
EDA360 is not a tool roadmap… at least not today, it is purely a vision based on the enlightenment of John Bruggeman, Cadence CMO and his team. They have seen the light, understand the pain of putting together an embedded system today and have identified a vision of where EDA needs to be in order to significantly remove that pain and increase productivity in embedded system solutions. It’s not the end, barely even the beginning, but it is a vision suitable for developing a strategy from, and that my fellow designers has significant value.
Over the last week I have been studying the EDA360 vision document and have extracted my perceptions of what was being said, merged in with my history in design along with my biases, and created a picture of the EDA360 vision. I am a visual kind of person, so for me to fully digest the scope of EDA360 I needed to turn it into a diagram. Below you can see a depiction of EDA360, “as Jeff sees it”.
Jeffs View of the EDA 360 Vision
From my perspective there were three significant takeaways from the vision:
- Product realization must start with the end applications; actual hardware design needs to move much further down the development pipe than it is today. We are designing complete application enabled systems, not just chips.
- An all-encompassing verification platform is one of the most critical barriers to realization of this vision and is the key to stitching all the abstraction levels together. This platform must cover full applications running at an early 100% TLM level through the same applications running in a mix of abstraction levels that include RTL, gate, transistor level as well as TLM. The verification bench must also include hooks into the physical end user world such as keyboards and displays. A tall order indeed, however a pivotal requirement nonetheless.
- A common “system” database that allows downstream access to design history as the system migrates towards finer levels of abstraction. Data should never be lost or regenerated. Leveraging historic development data is crucial for both quality and productivity.
It would be difficult to argue that this vision, as a beginning, is not where we need to be headed in the semi industry. As John points out in the vision paper, realization of this ideal system development environment will not happen within one EDA supplier. There are many pieces to solving the systems puzzle and many companies have something to offer towards this ultimate goal. I am curious what inputs Synopsys or Mentor have on the EDA360 vision? Achievement of this game changing visualization will require multi-company structure, organization, planning, execution and funding. Sounds like a consortium, maybe the Silicon System Crusaders (SSC). Let’s start talking and provide a cure for “Terminal Sameness” in embedded systems.
Know What’s Holding Back New Product Productivity
Are your teams striving to be better while the end business results indicate little change? Even with activities providing every appearance of improvement actions, there is a troubling factor with results. The expected change may never materialize, or more often the measurement criterion fails miserably at assessing true business success. Open-ended requirements, misguided success guidelines and misplaced assumptions lay the groundwork for an expensive initiative that provides little or no actual improvement to the product release cycle. Keep in mind the natural stability point for any organization is to keep things as they are.
To be fair this is not necessarily an intentional act, it is the status quo powers at work that strive to keep things in balance, a point where things remain comfortably the same. If you don’t believe this is at work in your organization review some of the past less successful initiatives, paying particular attention to success measurement. They were not likely tied to a solid contribution to top line revenue generation or bottom line costs, providing little motivation to move out of the comfort zone. Noticeable results will require noticeable change.
A truly successful endeavor must have a measurable impact on money. Criteria that flaunt a win based on local success within an organization silo should be a warning sign that the net benefit for the business may be non-existent. Limited measurement scope such as this leaves an organization susceptible to terminal sameness, a disease that quietly stymies advancement in new product development efforts.
Make no mistake – Any person will subconsciously strive to maintain the workflow as it is. Sure, there will be plenty of participation and ideas for change going on where others are concerned, thus keeping the workflow focus elsewhere. Ask anyone how new product execution is going and see where the focal point of the discussion goes. Isn’t it ironic that people and organizational silos actually have been granted the ability to grade them selves on productivity? If positive changes in execution are expected, self-assessment of efficiency has no place in the equation, period. A self-evaluation approach is an incestuous path to guaranteeing terminal sameness!
So I have to ask, is new product execution productivity OK or does it need work? Lip service tells me that it needs work, while actions tell me that it is OK. Are you supporting terminal sameness or are you supporting continuous improvement? There are powers at work to ensure nothing significant changes and you hold the key to weakening its grasp on your organization. Stir the pot and drive greater improvement value by measuring against only money and eliminate internally generated productivity assessments; it is a leadership choice.