The Making Of A System Architect


I mentor young people from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I got my MSEE. When I talk to them, they tell me they’re applying for chip architecture jobs. But when they graduate with their computer science degrees they all get channeled into verification jobs. Why verification jobs rather than architecture jobs? Because they don’t have a feel for the full architecture. T... » read more

Robotics Update From The Playing Field


For those competitive folks out there – which is probably everyone – here is an update on the eSilicon-sponsored robot I spoke of last month. I’m happy to report that our team finished fourth in a field of 24. As of now, they have a good chance of making it to the state-level competition. On top of an already outstanding weekend, our team won the Industrial Safety Award last weekend as we... » read more

An Unsustainable Divide


One of the great things about attending DVCon, or any other conference for that matter, is the networking. You get to see so many people who are eager to learn, to talk and to share ideas. When this happens, you tend to hear a lot of statements that have to rattle around in your mind for a while before you can start to make sense of them and see if any coherent themes emerge. By themes, I am... » read more

Prototype Like A Pro


FPGA-based prototyping has been a key prototyping technique for many years. The steady increase in software content and thus the need to verify and validate the SoC in context of the software has resulted in an equally steady increase in its usage. FPGA-based prototyping or physical prototyping, as it is also called, offers a great way to develop software, verify the hardware in context of that... » read more

Enhanced Electro-Mechanical Collaboration


By Alex Grange and Linda Mazzitelli Integrating electronics into its mechanical environment comes with a number of challenges that boil down to Collision and Connectivity (does the cabinet bang against that capacitor?) and Synchronization (is mechanical designing to the latest PCB design and vice versa?). The culprit to problems that arise usually is the result of poor communications. Mod... » read more

Why Is Semiconductor Schedule Predictability Boring?


Why is it not sexy to talk about the manageability of system-on-chip (SoC) projects? As an IP vendor, we are constantly bombarded with questions about how our technology can enhance performance, reduce latency, and lower power consumption. At the same time, reducing cost and time to market for the SoC design conflict with these requirements, even though they rank right up there among the top en... » read more

How Do Design And Verification Change In The IoT Age?


Where is the Internet of Things (IoT) on the hype curve? Are expectations too high, or is it really the next big thing? My recent trip to the Design Automation and Test Conference (DATE) in Dresden, Germany, did not give all the answers, but it definitely did shed some light for me on this topic. A very enthusiastic taxi driver took me back 25 years to the Nov. 9, 1989, the time when the Ber... » read more

Why I See C In SCE-MI


The two questions I hear most often while doing presentations about SCE-MI transaction based emulation are, “Can we have coffee break?” and “Why do we need a thin C layer between two SystemVerilog tops”? You a probably reading this during a coffee break, so let’s jump to second question. It refers to this diagram showing how to connect a SystemVerilog testbench (usually UVM) with D... » read more

Seeing Debug for What It Is


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

Can You Really Fry an Egg on a CPU?


Solving complex thermal models with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) requires a lot of processing power, and a central processing unit (CPU) under full load generates a fair amount of heat. But can you cook an egg on it? Search online and you can find videos of people attempting to cook on their processors—I wouldn’t recommend this as a cooling solution. However, just out of curiosity, I ... » read more

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