category: A System Perspective

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Plans Vs. Planning
By Jon McDonald - 20 Dec, 2013 - Comments: 0

The end of the year is a good time to look back at what’s happened over the past year, and look ahead to what might happen in the coming one. Two quotes that help my thought process when thinking about the might be coming, “Change is the law of life.” from Kennedy, and “Plans are nothing, but planning is indispensable” from Eisenhower. From my perspective, 2013 has been a good year... » read more

Rethinking Old Sayings
By Jon McDonald - 21 Nov, 2013 - Comments: 0

One of my favorite quotes from Gary Smith is a few years old: “It’s the software, stupid!” That statement was made way back in 2006. While it was, and in some ways still is, very illustrative, I believe it also points to one extreme in the back and forth between focusing on hardware then software to differentiate our electronic systems. At the point in time Gary made the statement that... » read more

The Rest Is History
By Jon McDonald - 26 Sep, 2013 - Comments: 0

I recently fielded some questions on the evolution of Electronic System Level design. The questions started me thinking about how ESL is being applied today and what effect some of the historical assumptions might be having on ESL’s perceived use cases. It’s interesting that we are at a point to consider historical assumptions about ESL. Looking it up, Wikipedia claims that the term ESL ... » read more

Start The Revolution
By Jon McDonald - 22 Aug, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald “Know thyself.” That advice is promoted in so many different forms it's hard to know where it started. I have been involved in a number of projects recently in which these words would have greatly simplified the project flow. “Simplified” is probably not quite the right word. The issue in this case is not to simplify the project, but to properly understand, characterize... » read more

Making Time to Do It Right
By Jon McDonald - 22 Aug, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald Change can be a very difficult thing. Most organizations I talk to about adopting system-level design know it’s a worthwhile investment. They believe it will have a positive return. They genuinely want to improve their processes, but believe they don’t have time to invest in making the change. In a recent conversation I heard an excellent encapsulation of this thinking. It ... » read more

Making Time to Do It Right
By Jon McDonald - 22 Aug, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald Change can be a very difficult thing. Most organizations I talk to about adopting system-level design know it’s a worthwhile investment. They believe it will have a positive return. They genuinely want to improve their processes, but believe they don’t have time to invest in making the change. In a recent conversation I heard an excellent encapsulation of this thinking. It ... » read more

Garbage Or Treasure?
By Jon McDonald - 27 Jul, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald “Garbage in, garbage out” is a very appropriate axiom to keep in mind as you consider what kind of system-level modeling to invest in. Unfortunately this can be complicated by considering another piece of wisdom that often applies as well: “One mans trash is another’s treasure.” What might be an inappropriate abstraction for one type of analysis may be very accepta... » read more

Why Should A Decision Be Delayed?
By Jon McDonald - 22 Jul, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald Way back in college when I first learned about “delayed binding” I was absolutely ecstatic. In its most general interpretation this is not just a software concept. It’s a way of life. The important part of the concept is to understand that a decision or an action should not be taken until it needs to be taken. This is a relatively simple concept with very broad implica... » read more

Garbage Or Treasure?
By Jon McDonald - 27 Jun, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald “Garbage in, garbage out” is a very appropriate axiom to keep in mind as you consider what kind of system-level modeling to invest in. Unfortunately this can be complicated by considering another piece of wisdom that often applies as well: “One mans trash is another’s treasure.” What might be an inappropriate abstraction for one type of analysis may be very accepta... » read more

Simple Economics
By Jon McDonald - 25 Apr, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald I was watching one of the MIT OpenCourseWare videos the other day. It was one of the lectures on Computer Science. I believe it was Prof. Robert Gallager who made a statement that really got me thinking: “Increasingly, system computational complexity has little impact on cost because of chip technology.” From a hardware perspective I initially had a bit of trouble with t... » read more

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