Get Ready ‘Cause Here It Comes: Accellera Systems Initiative Day @ DVCon

Lots of ink has been spilt (in a good cause) in reporting on the new Accellera Systems Initiative organization.  However, many of you may still wonder how you can get an in-depth view on what is happening in this new organization that resulted from the merger of Accellera and the Open SystemC Initiative (OSCI).  The answer is that such an in-depth look will be available to you at the fast-approaching DVCon 2012, scheduled to take place during the week of February 27th at the DoubleTree Hotel in San Jose.

There will, of course, be technical presentations revolving around Accellera Systems Initiative Standards (and IEEE Standards that originated in either Accellera or OSCI) throughout the entirety of DVCon.  However, the first day of DVCon is something truly special: “Accellera Systems Initiative Day” during which three tracks of tutorials will be presented that cover some of that organization’s prime standards (all times are on Monday February 27):

1)      An Introduction to IEEE 1666-2011, the New SystemC Standard (1:30-5 PM)

2)      UVM: Ready, Set, Deploy! (8:30-5 PM)

3)      An Introduction to the Unified Coverage Interoperability Standard (1:30-3 PM)

4)      Verification and Automation Improvement Using IP-XACT (3:30-6:30 PM).  The last hour of this tutorial will consist of an open poster session and reception.

Details on these various tutorials can be found on the DVCon website.  All of these tutorials will require a paid registration, but the wealth of information presented will make the price of admission well worth it.

In addition to these tutorials, the North American SystemC Users’ Group (NASCUG) will from 8:30-noon hold its 17th meeting (or, for the ancient Romans among you, meeting number XVII).  This co-located meeting will be open to the public and will, as the name of the session implies, focus on users’ experiences with SystemC.

At noon, in between the tutorials, there will be a sponsored lunch—sponsored in this case by the Accellera Systems Initiative, which it should be noted also sponsors all of DVCon.  As we did at last year’s DVCon, we wish to give the lunch attendees a break from PowerPoint presentations, and will conduct this lunch as a “town hall meeting”, i.e., an open discussion of issues relevant to the participants.  I shall, once again, be the nominal host for this event, but also present will be Accellera Systems Initiative Board members, Officers and Technical Working Group Chairs to field questions from the audience.

To get into the spirit of the lunch discussion, we have posted an open-ended question to kick things off:

“What will success for the Accellera Systems Initiative look like?”

 In other words, looking from this point in time, what ought to be the goals of the newly merged organization, and looking, say, five years from now, how will we know if we have been a success?

I urge all participants to give this question a lot of thought prior to DVCon, and come to the lunch prepared to let the Accellera Systems Initiative leaders hear your preference for the new organization’s strategic direction.