http://chipdesignmag.com/sld/craig/2010/07/22/what-eda360-isn%e2%80%99t/ Deep Insights for Chip Architects and Engineers Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:08:22 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 http://chipdesignmag.com/sld/craig/2010/07/22/what-eda360-isn%e2%80%99t/comment-page-1/#comment-23 Gary Stringham Fri, 17 Sep 2010 16:58:01 +0000 http://chipdesignmag.com/sld/craig/?p=21#comment-23 I, too, have read the EDA360 paper and liked its software-driven approach. I am an electrical engineer by degree but have been doing software most of my career. I have been frustrated when writing a device driver for a block that was cast in concrete. I had to contort myself to whatever the block presented. So I took it upon myself to talk with the hw engineers early on and was able to make significant changes to the hw design. In fact, in one case, a device driver took over a year to complete on one version of the block. I worked with the hw engineer to fix the problems and on the next version, I had the driver running in three days. I'm a firm believer that sw should dictate hw design. But that is a nice platitude because the development cycle of hw is much longer than sw. In order for sw to dictate hw design, sw engineers have to be involved early on even though it will be months before they have real hw to run on. I, too, have read the EDA360 paper and liked its software-driven approach. I am an electrical engineer by degree but have been doing software most of my career. I have been frustrated when writing a device driver for a block that was cast in concrete. I had to contort myself to whatever the block presented. So I took it upon myself to talk with the hw engineers early on and was able to make significant changes to the hw design. In fact, in one case, a device driver took over a year to complete on one version of the block. I worked with the hw engineer to fix the problems and on the next version, I had the driver running in three days. I’m a firm believer that sw should dictate hw design. But that is a nice platitude because the development cycle of hw is much longer than sw. In order for sw to dictate hw design, sw engineers have to be involved early on even though it will be months before they have real hw to run on.

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