Archive for September, 2007

Nine months ago, the IEEE Design Automation Standards Committee – DASC – seemed dysfunctional and on the brink of disaster. Accusations of foul play, domination and procedural violations were mounting.

I’m pleased to report that the DASC has made great strides toward full recovery.

Yesterday, I attended the meeting of the Standards Board of the IEEE Standards Association. At the conclusion of the DASC chair’s status presentation, the Standards Board chair thanked the DASC chair for showing leadership and dealing with the issues.

DASC might now be used as a model for troubled standards committees to learn how to address problems. Better yet, the DASC model could be used to prevent issues from arising in the first place.

There were two special ingredients in the turnaround of the DASC. New leadership and changes in affiliation made all the difference.

I’d like to recognize the efforts and professionalism of the DASC chair – and the DASC members – for this significant improvement in the EDA standards arena.

I just returned from a business trip to New Jersey with two of my colleagues. Thanks to one of them, we were upgraded to first class.

We were separated by a passenger sitting in the aisle seat. He refused to trade places so we could sit together. He brought his own food, didn’t say a word to us, and sat there with a sour look on his face.

When he fell asleep – with his mouth open (eewwww) – I dared my colleage to stick a breath strip in it. It’s a good thing my colleage was a chicken. Turns out the sour puss was probably an air marshall!

Everyone is invited to attend the 20th EDA Interoperability Developers’ Forum on October 25, 2007. This unique event has attracted EDA tool developers, end-users and standards creators for ten years.

The 20th Forum will feature sessions on the Unified Power Format standard and the Interoperable Pcells Library initiative.

Registration and details are at:
http://www.synopsys.com/news/events/devforums/2007/oct/index.html

open – available to everyone to use and contribute to, without discrimination or legal encumbrances.

Internet, texting and abbrevs.

LMK – let me know
IMHO – in my humble opinion
IANAL – I am not a lawyer
IANAD – I am not a doctor

This category will provide updates on what’s happening in the business aspects of the standards arena.

(Be my friend on Facebook…)

Karen Bartleson – Director of Interoperability, Synopsys

Karen Bartleson has 27 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. She joined Synopsys in 1995 as standards program manager and is currently director of interoperability and university programs. Her primary responsibilities include initiatives and programs that increase Synopsys’ customer satisfaction through electronic design automation tool interoperability, compute platform support, and university relationships. She also held the position of director of quality at Synopsys for three years.

Synopsys’ interoperability program develops partnerships in the design automation industry to drive comprehensive design solutions for enhanced customer design flows. It provides leadership and support within industry standards organizations such as IEEE and supplies open interfaces to the industry using an open source model with structured innovations coming from the community.

Prior to joining Synopsys, Ms. Bartleson was CAD manager at UTMC (United Technologies Microelectronics Center), responsible for the design system used to create high-reliability application-specific integrated circuits. Before that, she worked at Texas Instruments as logic analysis manager where she was responsible for the development and support of TI’s internal logic simulation products.

Ms. Bartleson is an officer of the IEEE Design Automation Standards Committee (DASC) which sponsors most of the IEEE design automation-related standards. She is a member of the IEEE Standard Education Committee (SEC) and recently contributed a tutorial on one of the newest design automation standards, SystemVerilog IEEE 1800. Presently, she is an active participant in the IEEE P1801 study group which is developing an IEEE standard for design and verification of low-power integrated circuits. Previously, she was an active member of the Electronic Design Automation Consortium’s interoperability committee and a participant in several IEEE standards working groups including 1076, 1364, 1481, and 1800.

As an officer and board member of the Accellera standards organization that supplies standards to the IEEE, Ms. Bartleson supported the IEEE Corporate Standards Program for design automation when the program was emerging. Accellera now recommends all of its standards to be entity-based as a result of the success of SystemVerilog, one of the earliest standards to go through the corporate standardization process.

Ms. Bartleson holds a BSEE from California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, California. She was the recipient of the Marie R. Pistilli Women in Design Automation Achievement Award in 2002. As an individual member of the IEEE for 28 years, Ms. Bartleson seeks to further the mission of the IEEE and the IEEE Standards Association.

This category is for some of the silly things that happen in EDA standards.