The Best Abstraction


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

Modeling Errors


Raising the abstraction level in increasingly large and complex design requires proxies. In IC world, we think of them in terms of higher abstractions, but the basic premise is that you can’t focus on ever detail without losing sight of the bigger picture, so we build models that can represent those details. Done well, these models are incredibly useful. They save time, make it easier to ... » read more

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