Neil Johnson

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Neil Johnson is principal consultant with XtremeEDA.

Author's Latest Posts

Make-Or-Break Time For Portable Stimulus
By Neil Johnson - 25 Oct, 2018 - Comments: 2

I’m pretty upbeat when it comes to portable stimulus. Or maybe it’d be better to say I’m pretty upbeat on the idea of portable stimulus. While doing my best to brush aside the usual EDA propaganda (propaganda I’ve found to be a bit haphazard, but more on that in a minute), I’ve put a lot of thought into how portable stimulus could fit into verification flows, the purpose of using it a... » read more

Abstracting Abstracter Abstractions In Functional Verification
By Neil Johnson - 26 Mar, 2018 - Comments: 0

I heard a clear three-part message during DVCon at the end of February: verification engineers must abstractly embrace the abstract idea of abstracting abstract abstraction through higher levels of abstraction; we overuse the word abstract to emphasize the value of whatever verification technique we happen to be talking about; and the key to new abstractions is using Portable Stimulu... » read more

UVM Can Kill You. More News At 11
By Neil Johnson - 04 Dec, 2017 - Comments: 0

Ok. I agree. Not a great title. I don’t like it either. Some pretty aggressive clickbait, I know. But it’s got the quick hit, newsy cliffhanger feel that makes you want to tune in anyway, doesn’t it? I had to go for it. For what it’s worth, it wasn’t my first choice. I wanted to go with “What You Don’t Know About UVM Can Kill You. More News at 11”. Same punch. Still the hi... » read more

Generically Reusable IP No One Uses
By Neil Johnson - 02 Oct, 2017 - Comments: 5

I can’t tell you how many times this line has jumped into my mind over the last couple decades, probably because I lost count sometime in 1998... Manager: “...why do they put a guarantee on the box then?” Tommy: “‘Cause they know all they sold you was a guaranteed piece of s***.” That’s an exchange from the movie Tommy Boy, a classic from my university days. Tommy Callaha... » read more

The Trust Burning Debug Cycle From Hell
By Neil Johnson - 03 Oct, 2016 - Comments: 3

As bad as The Trust Burning Debug Cycle From Hell sounds, it’s worse than you think. Most of us don’t realize it exists. In my first 10 years as a hardware developer I wrote code like it could never exist! But then came the realization. It’s a cycle that preys on us all. It tempts me constantly. Most of us in hardware development are used to seeing bugs as annoyances at a minimum, thou... » read more

The Future of UVM
By Neil Johnson - 26 Aug, 2016 - Comments: 7

It’s time for a frank discussion on the future of [gettech id="31055" comment="UVM"]. Given how UVM usage has grown and the number of teams that rely on it, I think this conversation has been a long time coming. Is continuing to use UVM the right thing to do? Do we have hard evidence that supports our continued usage of UVM? Do we actually benefit from it or do we just think we benefit? ... » read more

Turning Verification Inside Out
By Neil Johnson - 02 May, 2016 - Comments: 0

A new motivation for rebalancing came to me during a conversation I had a couple weeks ago at the Agile Alliance Technical Conference. I had the chance to compare my day-to-day responsibilities with those of Lisa Crispin. Lisa is a software test expert that is very well regarded within the [getkc id="182" comment="Agile Development"] community. Think of her as a Harry Foster/Janick Bergeron typ... » read more

RTL Done And Other Bogus Development Milestones
By Neil Johnson - 28 Mar, 2016 - Comments: 0

My definition of progress has changed over the years. I don’t think about it much anymore but it was obvious in a talk I gave a few weeks ago to a diverse group of hardware developers. Part of that talk centered around how we define progress in design and verification. This is a normal thing for me; I was speaking to slides I’d used several times before and the message was no different than... » read more

Seeing Debug for What It Is
By Neil Johnson - 29 Feb, 2016 - Comments: 0

Debug is problem solving. For many hardware developers, debug is a purpose. Finding a bug is a victory! Heck, debug can be flat out heroic. I’m sure we can all think back to colleagues that put in a few 80 hour, coffee fueled weeks, with managers peering over both shoulders, to fix an insidious string of bugs that threatened to further demolish a broken schedule and sabotage tape-out. W... » read more

Still Time to Blow Up UVM
By Neil Johnson - 28 Jan, 2016 - Comments: 2

Blowing up UVM is something I ran on my own blog a few years ago. Considering not much has changed with respect to UVM – that it continues to dominate verification circles – I figured it’s a discussion worth re-starting. In my mind, it’s not too late to take a few steps forward by blowing up UVM. A little history… the idea to blow up UVM was motivated by a slide snapshot posted to ... » read more

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