Most large electronics companies take a divide and conquer approach to projects, with clear division lines set between HW and SW engineers, so quite often the separate teams have distinct methodologies and ways to design, document, communicate and save a BoM. This division can lead to errors in the system development process,… Read More
A Brief History of Perforce
In 2020 Perforce acquired Methodics, a provider of IP Lifecycle Management (IPLM) tools, and Daniel Nenni blogged about that in July 2020, but a lot has happened since Perforce was founded in 1995. In the beginning Christopher Seiwald founded Perforce in his Alameda basement based on his background as a software developer, and… Read More
Conference: Embedded DevOps
The catchy phrase DevOps is defined by Agile advocates as, “The practice of operations and development engineers participating together in the entire service lifecycle, from design through the development process to production support.”
I’ve been developing software since the stone ages, which means… Read More
Third Generation of IP Lifecycle Management Launched
Back in July I first read the news that Perforce had acquired Methodics, and wasn’t too surprised, because many of the EDA vendors that we blog about do get acquired or merge with similar sized companies in order to be part of a bigger offering. When Methodics announced a webinar introducing IPLM 3.0 (IP Lifecycle Management),… Read More
Perforce Software Acquires Methodics!
This has got to be one of the most interesting and disruptive EDA acquisitions I have seen in some time. Another one that comes to mind is Siemens acquiring Mentor Graphics. We have been covering EDA PLM companies since the start of SemiWiki and have worked with most of them. If I had to keep score I would say it’s about even but … Read More
What’s At the Center of Your SoC Design Process?
I love starting a new project from scratch, because there’s that optimistic feeling of having no constraints and being able to creatively express myself and get the job done right this time. For SoC designs today there are teams of engineers and maybe a program manager plus a marketing person that define the features, budget… Read More
SEMI Takes the Jim Hogan and Simon Butler Conversation Virtual
As I originally reported a few weeks ago, the Jim Hogan fireside chat with Methodic’s CEO and founder Simon Butler was moved to a virtual event on May 1. The event was produced by the Electronic System Design (ESD) Alliance, a SEMI Strategic Technology Community. Bob Smith, executive director of ESDA, moderated the event. I am happy… Read More
Project-Centric Design Process, or IP-centric
How do most IC design teams organize their work during the design process?
Most design teams would say that they organize their work into a project-centric view, and that at the beginning of the process use a tool for requirements management, maybe a bug tracker, or some design management tool. On the four IC designs that I worked … Read More
UPDATE: Everybody Loves a Winner
Building a successful startup is hard, very hard. Creating a new category along the way is even more difficult. Those that succeed at both endeavors are quite rare. This is why an upcoming ESD Alliance event is a must-see in my view. The event is entitled “Jim Hogan and Methodics’ Simon Butler on Bootstrapping a Startup to Profitability… Read More
Avoiding Fines for Semiconductor IP Leakage
In my semiconductor and EDA travels I’ve enjoyed visiting engineers across the USA, Canada, Europe, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. I’ll never forget on one trip to South Korea where I was visiting a semiconductor company and upon reaching the lobby a security officer asked me to take out my laptop computer, because he wanted me to… Read More