System Standards Worlds Initiate Unification
Accellera, who brought us SystemVerilog, and the Open SystemC Imitative (OSCI), who brought us SystemC have made known their intent to unite to form a single front-end electronic design automation (EDA) standards organization. You can read their joint press release here.
While this may come as a surprise to many, one thing has remained … Read More
I reported before on my plans to attend the Design Automation Conference in San Diego last week. It was an interesting event and I would like to take this opportunity to share some of my experiences and impressions. By my standards, DAC is a large event. If you are familiar with the various shows focused on embedded, DAC is bigger than any of the ESC events, but smaller than Embedded World. It does … Read More
Tags: design automation conference, DAC, esl, multi-core
One year ago, I was writing about the inclusion of Mentor ESL in the TSMC Reference Flow 11, and why the endorsement of system-level design and high-level synthesis by the world’s leading foundry was a telling sign of maturity for ESL.
Since this first major milestone, TSMC and Mentor haven’t remained idle, on the contrary. Both parties teamed-up to take this first ESL flow to a whole new … Read More
Tags: Vista, DAC, esl, Catapult C, TSMC, Verification, High-Level Synthesis, How-to
Last night, in his traditional DAC-opening presentation, Gary Smith addressed the crowd with a loud and clear message about the cost of doing hardware design. Design costs are steadily increasing and this is draining life and blood out of the industry. When chip design costs reach $25M, VCs stop funding start-ups. When costs reach $50M, continued Gary Smith, even IDMs struggle to afford ASIC developments.
So … Read More
Tags: cost, DAC, ASIC, High-Level Synthesis, How-to, esl, Gary Smith
Another quick heads up. Last week I mentioned that the upcoming DAC show in San Diego, CA [next week] will have a significant embedded focus. As the show has a long history in the EDA world, Mentor Graphics will, as usual, be making an extensive contribution. Full details are shown here. From the embedded software perspective, we are working with some key partners - Texas Instruments, Freescale, NetLogic … Read More
Tags: design automation conference, DAC
It is a curious thing, which I have written about before [here and here for example]: almost every electronic device that has been designed in the last 15-20 years has contained a microprocessor or microcontroller in some form - they are embedded systems. This means that, by definition, a significant part of the design and development process is the creation of software. And yet hardware design and … Read More
Tags: design automation conference, EDA, DAC, Embedded World
If you are going to DAC this year, then you must attend the 9th Annual ESL Symposium and not just because there is free lunch or you need the new Apple iPad 2. This year, Wally Rhines will moderate a very impressive panel line-up:
Gadi Singer - Intel
Vice President, Intel Architecture Group
General Manager, System-on-Chip Enabling Group
John Goodenough - ARM
Vice President of Design Technology and … Read More
Tags: User Testimonial, Freescale, STMicroelectronics, High-Level Synthesis, esl, DAC, intel, ARM
Just back from DAC in Anaheim. The last true Denali party was a smash. We’ll see if the tradition continues under new management. Nothing amazing to report about the show. Attendance seemed OK, though not stellar.
Here’s an observation some may find interesting. I worked booth duty at both the TSMC OIP pavilion and the Global Foundries Global Solutions pavilion. At TSMC, the attendees needed to get … Read More
With every new technology comes a learning curve, and High-Level Synthesis isn’t different in this respect. Ramping up on a new tool obviously means learning its knobs and switches, but most importantly when it comes to synthesis, the ultimate key to successful results is to learn and understand the proper coding style.
Let’s time warp back to 1994. Back then I was learning RTL synthesis and picking … Read More
There it goes again… Every four years it’s the same struggle… How can one survive being both a soccer fan and an EDA professional when DAC and the FIFA world cup collide? In a few hours, France will play Uruguay. How can one soundly go through long final reviews when his home team is playing?
Of course, attending the conference as a visitor or an exhibitor isn’t quite the same thing and the preparation … Read More
Tags: DAC, Catapult C Synthesis
Jim Martens
John Day
J VanDomelen
Nazita Saye
Michael Ford
Robin Bornoff
Mike Jensen
Tom Fitzpatrick
Max Clark
Patrick Carrier
Mark Laing
Travis Mikjaniec
Christopher Hallinan
Bernard Sutton