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
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
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
Three years ago my youngest son purchased a $17 smart watch on eBay, but then my oldest son read an article warning about how that watch would sync with your phone, then send all of your contact info to an address in China. My youngest son then wisely turned the watch off, and never used it again. Hackers have been able to spoof and hide … Read More
I often blog about a specific EDA tool, or an IP block, but the way that SoC design teams approach their designs and then use tools and IP can either be a manual, ad-hoc process, or part of something that is well-documented, following a design methodology. Back in the 1980’s while at Intel our team first created a design methodology… Read More
My first professional experience with computers and file permissions was at Intel in the late 1970s, where we used big iron IBM mainframes located far away in another state, and each user could edit their own files along with browse shared files from co-workers in the same department. I saw this same file permission concept when … Read More
Earlier this month I attended a webinar organized by Methodics on the topic of IP life cycle management and traceability, with three presenters and a Q&A session at the end. I’ve worked with Michael Munsey before and he was the first presenter. Semiconductor IP creation and re-use is the foundation of all modern IC designs,… Read More
To me the major idea of ISO 26262 compliance is ensuring that requirements can be traced throughout the entire design and verification process, including the use of IP blocks. The first market application that comes to mind with ISO 26262 is automotive, with its emphasis on safety because human lives are at stake. Since necessity… Read More
The big three EDA vendors are constantly putting more of their tools in the cloud in order to speed up the design and verification process for chip designers, but how do engineering teams approach using the cloud for functional verification tests and regressions? At the recent Cadence user group meeting (CDNLive) there was a presentation… Read More
The automotive segment is being well served by semiconductor suppliers of all sizes because of the unit volumes, and the constant push to automate more of the driving decisions to silicon and software can raise lots of questions about safety, reliability and trust. Fortunately the ISO standards body has already put in place a functional… Read More
