Many years ago, I remember discussions around islands of automation/silos. Within the scope of any given silo there is plenty of automation to handle tasks relevant to that phase. But managing the full lifecycle from concept through manufacturing to field support must cross between silos, and those transitions are not as clean… Read More
Semiconductor designs have been progressing over time to address wider product varieties and designs with increasing complexity. Organizations have been addressing intense time-to-market pressures by leveraging globally dispersed team resources. The project-centric design methodology, which once worked well with … Read More
Chiplet-based System-on-Chips (SoCs) are becoming increasingly popular in the semiconductor industry due to their potential to improve design efficiency, increase performance, and reduce costs. While chiplets are seen as a way to reduce the cost of innovation, they introduce a lot of challenges too. Packaging, interconnect… Read More
In the SoC world, we can’t believe our good luck. Every product maker now wants bespoke silicon solutions with the most advanced AI, communications, SLAM, etc. Which is fantastic for business, but this level of demand also drags us into a new level of accountability, especially in requirements traceability. Time was that only … Read More
It is difficult to imagine an SoC development team not using some form of automation to assemble their SoCs; the sheer complexity of the assembly task for modern designs is already far beyond hand-crafted top-level RTLs. An increasing number of groups have already opted for solutions based on the IP-XACT integration standard.… Read More
Traceability as an emerging debate around hardware is gaining a lot of traction. As a reminder, traceability is the need to support a disciplined ability to trace from initial OEM requirements down through the value chain to implementation support and confirmed verification in software and hardware. Demand for traceability… Read More
Excel is a wonderful, general purpose spreadsheet tool that lets me organize and analyze rows and columns of data into something meaningful, however it doesn’t know anything about requirements traceability for complex semiconductor projects. So why do so many engineering teams still rely upon Excel or custom, in-house… Read More
Portland, Oregon is a hotbed of innovation for software development companies and I tend to scan the headlines of my local newspaper the Oregonian, which is where I first started to read about Jama Software a few years back. Curiosity and opportunity drove me to meet with Trevor Smith of Jama in their Portland office. We chatted for… Read More
Audits. The mere mention of the word keeps project managers up at night and sends most designers running. However, in the case of FPGA designs seeking DO-254 compliance, the product doesn’t ship until the audit is complete – there is no avoiding it, or skating around it.… Read More
Engineers are known for their attention to detail and precision in thinking, but sometimes still struggle during compliance audits. This is especially true the longer a list of requirements becomes, especially unstructured lists kept in spreadsheets and on Post-It notes.
It gets even more complicated, because in defense circles… Read More
