Estimates, Spreadsheets And Abstract Models


By Jon McDonald Lies, damn lies and statistics. Occasionally I get the impression that some engineers feel we’ve just taken that step beyond statistics in our ESL modeling. In a recent discussion I was very pointedly reminded of the subjective nature of abstract design and analysis. Like most predictions, you don’t really know what’s going to happen until it actually comes to pass. Us... » read more

An ESL Measurement Epiphany


By Jon McDonald Sometimes something becomes so simple and clear it’s shocking. I recently experienced such an epiphany. It started with a typical discussion on hardware software relationships and tradeoffs. How do you know what should be done in which? Realistically there is no automatic method to determine the proper partition. The best we can do is to propose a potential solution, the... » read more

A High-Level Model For Reducing Frustration


By Jon McDonald Earlier this week I was sitting in the airport waiting for my flight 
to depart. I was connecting through Atlanta. This happened to be one of the days that Atlanta was receiving heavy rains causing flooding 
and occasionally closing the airport. First the flight to Atlanta was 
delayed an hour, then two, then three. Meanwhile my connecting flight 
had been c... » read more

What’s New And What Isn’t In ESL


By Jon McDonald Just because a problem can be solved doesn’t mean it has been solved. Last week I was on a panel at the ISLPED conference in San Francisco. This conference is focused on low power, and the panel addressed some of the things that are being done and some things needed for low power analysis exploration and trade-offs. While the panel was very interesting, one question that... » read more

How to Future-Proof A Hardware Designer


I’m at DAC this week, where there is a lot of interest and discussion on what’s going on in design and what’s going to happen to designers. One conversation with a university professor gave me a “eureka” moment. The professor had a student who really loved RTL design. The student asked him where he could get a job doing this, and the professor suggested the student move to India... » read more

ESL…Is It What You Want Or What You Need?


Last week I was sitting in a meeting having an extended discussion on what information and benefits could be derived from an ESL transaction model of a system.  It reminded me of the words of those immortal philosophers, The Rolling Stones, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find, you get what you need”.  I believe this is a philosophy that ne... » read more

Problems In Multicore Design


Jon McDonald talks about the multitude of choices in multicore design and what to do about it. Click here to watch the video. » read more

Is ESL Formal Verification An Oxymoron?


“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” – Albert Einstein I’ve had a number of conversations recently trying to understand what verification means for ESL and higher level models. It seems that most of the people I talk to are looking for a guarantee, they want formal verification, a proof that the design is doing what it should... » read more

Why bother with ESL?


I’m in southern California today at the EDA Tech Form. I’ve been thinking about a conversation I had recently with a colleague. He’s been doing system-level modeling for a few years and has been an advocate for transaction-level modeling and ESL in his company. He has had tremendous success in identifying and fixing system-architecture issues before implementation, as well as saving his ... » read more

ESL Languages: Which One Is Right For Your Needs?


The question about ESL language is the right one comes up over and over again.  As customers begin to understand the benefits of modeling and analysis at the system level, they must address this question as one of the first steps in getting started.   What language should be used for ESL—SystemC, SystemVerilog, UML or M? Technically, you can create an ESL/TLM platform in any language yo... » read more

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