category: A System Perspective

category: Auto, Security & Edge AI

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

The Best Abstraction
By Jon McDonald - 28 Mar, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald The other day I was asked what would be the best level of abstraction to model at for system-level design. This is a question I get, in one form or another, far too often. It reminds me of an old quote attributed to Lincoln, slightly updated and applied to this subject: “One model can answer some of the questions all of the time, and all of the questions some of the time, but... » read more

Keep The Silos
By Jon McDonald - 31 Jan, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald I’ve had a couple of conversations recently in which software developers expressed that they have little interest in working with hardware or systems developers. The general sentiment seemed to be “when [a place commonly regarded as extremely hot] freezes over” they might consider it. Perhaps for those living in northern climates there may be a possibility of this freeze,... » read more

The Fine Art Of Compromise
By Jon McDonald - 19 Dec, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald Ask 10 people a question and you might get 10 different answers. Ask 10 software engineers what they need in a hardware platform and you might get more than 10 different answers because each probably will have a list of needs for the platform to deliver. Getting them to agree on acceptable targets may not be as difficult as a budget compromise, but project failure is a more pe... » read more

Show Me
By Jon McDonald - 29 Nov, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald Many people—engineers especially, myself included—are naturally biased against change. To get an organization to change takes significant energy. This isn’t a new trend. Much of the sentiment of the camp against change can be summed up by referring back to an 1899 quote from Missouri Sen. Willard Vandiver: “… frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am f... » read more

The Real Value Of Test
By Jon McDonald - 25 Oct, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Jon McDonald Sometimes one test is worth a thousand code reviews. Perhaps not a thousand, but it is a very significant number. Not that this is a new idea, but I’ve had a couple of experiences recently that reminded me how valuable a transaction-level simulation model is as an executable specification. In one case we were reviewing aspects of a potential design change, trying to decide... » read more

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