Comments for System-Level Design

Comment on EDA’s Cloudy Vision by Gary Smith

Gary Smith — Thu, 24 May 2012 23:22:49 +0000

It’ll get more complicated as IC Design moves to a Heterogeneous Computer environment while the Cloud remains Homogeneous.

Gary

Comment on Power Benefits Of Modular Interconnect Design Using Network-On-Chip Technology by Yingtao

Yingtao — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:57:58 +0000

pretty good paper.

Comment on Derivative ICs: A Look At The Options by Grant Martin

Grant Martin — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 21:52:51 +0000

People interested in the subject of Platform-Based Design may wish to go back to one of the first books about its use in SOC design: Surviving the SOC Revolution – A Guide to Platform-Based Design by Henry Chang, L.R. Cooke, Merrill Hunt, Grant Martin (yes, I am biased…..), Lee Todd and Andy McNelly, Springer (was Kluwer), 1999. Many of the details have changed, but this design approach is still very relevant, 13 years on.

Comment on SoC Design In 5 Years by Keith Hopkins

Keith Hopkins — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 01:43:00 +0000

SOC Design in 5 years….

70% Design Reuse

Comment on EDA’s Big Hurdles by ed

ed — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 14:29:30 +0000

It depends on how you define EDA. The classical portion of EDA–place and route, synthesis, etc.–has definitely lost momentum. It’s just too expensive to get chips out the door. That’s the biggest problem that EDA has to wrestle with because it limits the number of customers who can use EDA tools. EDA has always existed with the blessing of the big IDMs, but the problems they have solved over the years have created even more difficult problems–and those problems collectively cost too much to solve. That has to be fixed, or Moore’s Law will become irrelevant. One way to do that is re-use of IP, IP subsystems, and changing what’s put into a package. That turns the biggest challenges into integration and faster software code development, which is where a lot of the attention is now focused. Is that classical EDA? No, and the backgrounds of people may change from electrical engineering to an expertise in physics, software, math and business. Maybe it needs a different name, but the broader business of solving these new problems is just getting started.

Comment on EDA’s Big Hurdles by Wes Lentie

Wes Lentie — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 17:38:31 +0000

Come on Ed, EDA is dead. Just look at DAC – there has been no new blood coming into EDA for centuries. Just a bunch of old, has-beens running the big EDA companies and Gary Smith. Gary has been wrong more often than a broken clock and all he does is praise Wally so Mentor can keep paying him (where is Icahn?). But he’s all EDA’s got. Cooley? You pay enough and Cooley, like Gary, will publish whatever you want. Every year we hear the same old drivel from narcissist-Aart and Wally (difficult to say who is the less ‘original’ thinker between the two); there are no risk takers, no one is funding any new start-ups (hence innovation is dead). Any one who could has escaped EDA and all that is left is the inmates running an asylum that is decrepit and crumbling.

Comment on Who’s In Control? by Tom Quan

Tom Quan — Thu, 26 May 2011 19:42:14 +0000

I would argue that TSMC has built a very comprehensive and deep ecosystem covering RDA, IP and design services, rival by none.

Comment on Version Control Nightmares by Shiv Sikand

Shiv Sikand — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:22:04 +0000

The challenge is no longer revision control. The real difficulties lie in building content management systems that understand IP and their derivative relationships and the ability to propagate both data and meta-data between parents and children incrementally and bi-directionally.

Comment on Embedded Computing Down To Two Major Camps by JTK

JTK — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 17:44:38 +0000

Interesting article! Thanks for distilling the issues.

Comment on EDA Forecast: More Clouds by Harry Gries

Harry Gries — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 06:00:54 +0000

I guess if you keep repeating the message enough times, eventually people will listen. I predict that within the next 6-12 months, you will see at least 1-2 major companies in the industry make a big move towards the cloud. Verification is certainly the most likely 1st application.