category: A System Perspective

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Which Group Should Create System Models?
By Jon McDonald - 26 Jun, 2014 - Comments: 0

One of the factors affecting adoption of a system-level flow is identifying who will do the work to create the system model. For most organizations it's not something they have allocated to a specific group. Generally when an ESL flow is deployed, the software developers, architects and hardware designers will all benefit from the investment, so it would be reasonable that they all contribut... » read more

Is The Definition Of IC Reliability Changing?
By Matthew Hogan - 18 Jun, 2014 - Comments: 1

“You know, brain surgery's not difficult if you don't care whether the person dies, it's actually quite easy. Flying a plane is quite easy if you don't mind crashing. That's what hard means. It's an expression of how much you care about the result. And if you are proud of it, or you believe it can be good and you want it to be good, then it can be sort of infinitely hard, to the point where i... » read more

Commoditizing Our Kids
By Jon McDonald - 27 Mar, 2014 - Comments: 0

My son is graduating from high school this year. He’ll be starting on an engineering degree in the fall. Thinking about the outlook he will face reminds me of questions and comments I have received from customers and colleagues at various points. In my mind these thoughts reduce to a simple question: Is engineering skill becoming a commodity? From Wikipedia: “The exact definition of th... » read more

What You Can Learn From Robots
By Jon McDonald - 30 Jan, 2014 - Comments: 0

My sons are in the robotics club at their high school. They program a small robot to perform simple tasks to score points in a competition. It’s a great way for them to learn about embedded systems and stimulate their interest in technology. While looking for ways to help them improve their understanding of embedded systems we started going through some of the online material, one of the c... » read more

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

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