Jon McDonald

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Jon McDonald is a technical marketing engineer for the design and creation business at Mentor Graphics.

Author's Latest Posts

Applying Rules Differently
By Jon McDonald - 31 Mar, 2011 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald Over the past few months I’ve worked with a number of customers on new designs. Thinking about how these designs were evolving in the various organizations led me to an interesting epiphany related to the application of Gall’s Law to system design. Gall's Law is a rule of thumb from John Gall's Systemantics: How Systems Really Work and How They Fail: “A complex system ... » read more

The Missing Link
By Jon McDonald - 23 Feb, 2011 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald When something comes up once it may be an anomaly, but when the same thing comes up multiple times in a short period of time there's a good chance it is a more general trend. At Mentor we have tools focused on Systems Engineering and UML/SysML, as well as SystemC ESL/TLM focused tools. We have invested effort in integrating the tool flows, but I had not seen significant driv... » read more

Models, Models, Models…
By Jon McDonald - 27 Jan, 2011 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald It's all about the models. Sometimes I get the feeling that progress is blazing along. Everyone I talk to is interested in ESL design. The value of the capabilities and possibility of dramatic impact on the design process is monumental. It's kind of like having an amazing sports car that will blow everything off the track but you are stuck on an island with no track and no way ... » read more

Why Is My Simulation So Slow?
By Jon McDonald - 16 Dec, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald I am amazed how often simulation performance comes up when discussing SystemC and transaction-level modeling. Some of this I can understand. If you are new to transaction-level modeling the implications can take a while to get a handle on. Fundamentally it is difficult to justify the investment in TLM if the models are not significantly simpler to write and significantly fas... » read more

The Ever-Growing System Challenge
By Jon McDonald - 10 Dec, 2010 - Comments: 0

It used to be easy to define a system. It was an ASIC, an ASSP or even an SoC. Increasingly, however, that definition isn’t nearly broad enough. With power issues now spreading across an entire device and software being used to manage everything from embedded applications to board-level functionality, the system is now much bigger than a single chip or even a system in package. It now enc... » read more

Out Of Context
By Jon McDonald - 18 Nov, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald A rose by any other name is still a rose. I have had the opportunity to speak with a number of different groups recently, covering everyone from systems engineers focused on specifications and documentation to software teams, architects and implementation groups. Each group has their own unique language, their own unique way of communication. Some of the most entertaining co... » read more

ESL’s Effect On What Engineers Assume
By Jon McDonald - 21 Oct, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald I’m on a cruise this week. I’m spending some time thinking about things other than work, but from time to time even normal life does have an impact on esoterically engineering concepts. As the cruise has visited a number of different ports my wife and I have made many assumptions—assumptions about what we both want to do in port, assumptions about what will be availabl... » read more

How Is ESL Like an Elephant?
By Jon McDonald - 23 Sep, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald Recently I have been involved in a number of activities with customers, bringing together their hardware, software, algorithm, and systems engineers to understand how to improve their processes using ESL capabilities. This included inviting experts from the various EDA technology areas to explore the best approaches for applying the full range of ESL capabilities to specific cu... » read more

The Tide Is Turning
By Jon McDonald - 24 Jun, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald I was at DAC last week. Over the course of the week I had a chance to talk with a significant number of customers and others in the industry. As has been the case the past few years there was good interest in system-level design. But from my perspective the tone of the discussions experienced a major shift this year. In the past, much of the discussion was around “why—wh... » read more

How Good Is Good Enough?
By Jon McDonald - 27 May, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald I’ve heard a few comments recently questioning how good is good enough. How good does a device have to be before it’s above questioning its capabilities? When designing some new whiz-bang device how do we know when we can stop? I think most engineers will agree there is always room for improvement. There are additional optimizations, refinements or alternative approaches... » read more

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