Author's Latest Posts


Hyperscaling The 21st Century Engineer


While January is the month of predictions for many, I have made it a habit to look back and see how previous forward-looking assessments have worked out. It is fascinating to see how many past predictions were off and how little has changed in some areas. Twenty years ago, in January 2001, the front cover of IEEE Spectrum set the theme of ubiquitous connectivity in an always-on world. Some o... » read more

Industry Transformations In 2021 And Beyond


Last December, the name of my predictions blog summarized my view crisply, which is that "applications, ecosystems and system complexity will be key verification drivers for 2020." Slam dunk on these. Application domains significantly impacted verification aspects in 2020. Who would have thought that Facebook and AWS would be among the keynotes at our user conference, speaking about how thei... » read more

System Design For Next-Generation Hyperscale Data Centers


As we are in the process of hyperscaling the large volumes of data that our devices and sensors create, processing this data along the way at far and near edges, and transmitting the hard-to-imagine volumes of data through networks to data centers for processing, the data center itself is undergoing a fundamental shift with new networking and architecture co-design opportunities. In a previous ... » read more

Different Requirements For Hyperscale Computing Across Vertical Application Domains


As mentioned in previous posts, one of the key conversations I have with customers a lot these days is how to deal with the balance of storage, compute and connectivity as we enter the era of hyperscale computing. While there are overarching challenges that are “of similar class” across the vertical application domains—consumer, hyperscale computing, mobile, networking, aerospace/defense,... » read more

Hyperscale And Edge Computing: The What, Where And How


We hear a lot about “edge computing” these days. We are approaching an era in which unfathomable amounts of data are created, which need to be transmitted, stored, processed and made sense of. As we are witnessing never-before-seen scaling in all those domains, the term “hyperscale” computing has been invented. But what about the edge? As it turns out, the definition seems to have chang... » read more

The Four Pillars Of Hyperscale Computing


In his keynote at CadenceLIVE Americas 2020, Facebook’s Vijay Rao, director, Technology and Strategy, described the four core elements the team considers when designing their data centers—compute, storage, memory, and networking. Wait a minute. Facebook? How did we get here? Wasn’t EDA supposed to be focused on chip design? As indicated in a previous blog, electronic value chains are defi... » read more

Computational Software: The Foundation Across Software Disciplines


You may have seen the term "computational software" more often recently. What are some prominent examples? Why do we in the electronic design automation (EDA) industry have to deal with math in the first place? Wasn't chip design all about drawing polygons at one point? I’m glad you asked! Computational software supports and manages the complexity of fundamental industry trends—hyperscal... » read more

Hyperscale And Artificial Intelligence Are Reshaping Value Chains


Observing electronic ecosystems and value chains change over time is fascinating. For instance, the design chain for mobile devices fundamentally changed over the past two decades with waves of disaggregation and aggregation. Today, the area of computing and data centers is amid tectonic shifts and transformation, with the combination of hyperscale, networking, artificial intelligence (AI), and... » read more

Digital Immersion: The Next Step Towards The Future Of Mobile Devices And Connectivity


In considering how far we’ve come with mobile devices just in the last two decades, it’s entertaining to think about the next ten years. When asking the new power users, Generation Z or the “digital natives,” a couple of key themes emerge, both for mobile devices, as well as for the networks they reside in. Some key advancements have been made this week with the announcement of Arm’s ... » read more

Math And Electronic Design Automation


Even though our teenage children may not show it the proper appreciation (yet), math is often referred to as the "universal language." And it is, even in EDA. Whenever I’m asked what the heck I do in my day job, I often fall back on analogies—a lot of them refer to building houses. For the geekier ones among us, I have even invoked The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's Slartibartfast to ex... » read more

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