As a blogger I have the privilege of meeting many IC designers from around the world, mostly through contact on LinkedIn or from connecting at trade shows. Through a contact at DACI met up with Achim Graupner, a manager of methodology and design automation from ZMDI, then asked him for an interview to understand how his group does … Read More
Designing an SoC sounds way more exciting than bug tracking, but let’s face it – any bug has the potential to make your silicon fail, so we need to take a serious look at the approaches to bug tracking. When using an IP or an IP subsystem in a design, the SoC integrators require some critical knowledge about this IP. The actual… Read More
At DACin San Francisco this past June I was able to visit and blog about two dozen EDA companies, however there were so many more products and events to see that I couldn’t possibly have enough time to enjoy them all. Fortunately for me there were plenty of videos made of vendor presentations, so this week I got caught up a bit by… Read More
IP and Data Management (DM) for SoC teams has gradually moved from ad-hoc approaches using simple Excel spreadsheets, to home-grown software that is specific to a project or company, and finally to commercially supported tools. One such commercial toolset for IP lifecycle management is from Methodics, named ProjectIC –… Read More
To keep track of my business and personal finances I use software from Quicken, but for an SoC with hundreds of IP blocks how do you keep track of everything? The answer is found in the growing field of EDA tools for IP management, and at DACearlier this month I sat down with Neil Handof Methodics to get an update on what the industry trends… Read More
This is the biggest year ever for Methodics at DAC, with lots to show, and a team of people excited to talk to customers and potential customers alike. Methodics will also be giving away Pebble Smartwatches!
Methodics theme for DAC2014 is “IP and design management done right”. A key part of this message is to show how their unique open… Read More
Designing an SoC requires a team, and the engineers typically use lots of specialized EDA software and semiconductor IP to get the job done. Many have started to ask about how designing a chip is different than designing and managing a large software project, or how is analog design different than digital design in terms of managing… Read More
Digital designers have been automating the functional verification process for many years now, however when you talk to an analog designer about how they do verification you quickly realize that the typical process is quite ad-hoc and little automated. Necessity does create an opportunity so the software engineers at Methodics… Read More
SoC hardware designers could learn a thing or two from the world of software development, especially when it comes to the topic of managing complexity. Does that mean that hardware designers should literally use a software development environment, and force fit hardware design into file and class-based software methodologies?… Read More
Jim Feldhan, President of Semico Research presented earlier this month at the Impact Conference on the topic: Focus on the IP Ecosystem. I’ve reviewed his 19 page presentation, and summarize it with:
