Archive for November, 2008

Thanks to Sean Murphy and Ed Lee for orchestrating an interesting and enjoyable bloggers’ Birds-of-a-Feather session at ICCAD.  There were almost 30 people in attendance, and we had some lively discussion. 

For those who missed my “lightening talk”, here is a summary.  I’d like to add pictures of my slides like John Busco did, but WordPress is causing me grief today.  Sorry this will be text-only until I can coax WP into cooperating with me.

I began by introducing myself with a picture of a traditional resume.  I’ve been in the industry for a long time, spending much of my attention in standards.  Over the past year, I’ve become a fan of new social media.  Hence, I’m Linked In, on Facebook, and on MySpace.  I started a blog on blogher.com where I can write about technology and express my opinions, independent from my affiliation with Synopsys.  For the BoF, however, I put on my hat as a corporate blogger from Synopsys and the author of this blog, The Standards Game.  If you believe the data, I have over 1,100 RSS subscribers.  I don’t know who most of you are, but I do know one of you: my counterpart at one of my competitors.  You told me that you always read my posts because every time I create one, it causes you trouble. 

Next, I described why I blog.  First, it’s fast.  I can provide information almost immediately.  I showed an example of posting my recent election as an Accellera officer on the day it happened.  The traditional press release announcement followed about 6 weeks later.  Second, it’s effective.  My responsibility in the standards arena is to help develop and promote the standards that greatly impact my customers.  I showed an example of how one of my posts resulted in customers learning about and joining an industry standards effort.  In the past, building an interested standards community was hit-or-miss, relying mostly on press releases and word-of-mouth.  Third, blogging is fun.  I have a post in progress called “Brussels Sprouts: Food or Weapon”.  Watch for it in the next few weeks.

Then, I talked about how I blog. To begin with, I commit to my calendar.  I have time blocked out every Thursday to dedicate to writing my post of the week.  (OK, I can’t wait to see who the first person will be to comment that I missed my post last week!)  It takes a bit of discipline to write regularly, but that’s what keep a blog alive.  I come up with ideas for posts by paying attention to what’s going on around me.  For example, I received an email notice about an upcoming ballot for P1801 (the IEEE standards project also known as UPF).  It was at the time of the U.S. presidential election, so I thought it apropos to write about another vote.  I don’t compose my posts in WordPress because it isn’t as feature-rich as Word.  But, I don’t use Word for its spell checker as evidenced by the famous “Owed to a Spell Checker” poem.  (Ask me if you haven’t seen it; it’s terrific.) I cut and paste into WP, read my post one more time, close my eyes, and push “Publish”.  Yes it’s true, I do not have any reviewers or approvers.

Finally, my new media mentor taught me that my blog is like a garden.  I tend it regularly, feeding it posts, watching ratings and comments, and weeding out spam.  (Actually, Askimet is great at filtering spam, but it occasionally traps a valid comment or lets something gross slip by.)

It is an honor to be part of the growing blogger community in EDA.  Thanks to all of you, my readers and supporters.

I’m attending the 21st Interoperability Forum in Santa Clara CA today.  We are continuing our 10-year tradition of providing technical and market-relevant information about interoperability to EDA tool developers.  As always, about a week after the event, materials from the Forum will be posted on our website. Rich Goldman, VP of Corporate Marketing and Strategic Alliances at Synopsys, welcomed the audience and kicked off the event as Master of Ceremonies. 

The first session in today’s Forum addressed interoperability for custom/analog design.  Scott Chase, our principal engineer of Custom Designer (Synopsys’ newly-announced product entry into the custom/analog market), gave a technical view into the product and its open environment.  Karim Khalfan, technical marketing engineer at ClioSoft, described their integration with Custom Designer via OpenAccess.  Ed Lechner, admittedly a marketing guy at Synopsys, gave a brief (yes, even as a marketing guy) overview of the IPL Alliance for interoperable physical design kits and pcells.  Neel Gopalan, chair of the IPL Alliance working group on properties and parameters, described the latest technology contribution made to his group.

During the general session, Rich provided a update on several standards and interoperability activities.  He then made a few moving statements about his pride in America after our election and the tough economic times that some of our friends are experiencing.

The next session focused on Open SystemC, with Frank Schirrmeister of Synopsys (and a fellow blogger) giving details on SystemC TLM-2.0.

The keynote speaker was the ever-popular EDA journalist Mike Santarini.  His engaging talk was titled, “EDA is an Ecosystem: Interoperability and the Future of EDA”, and he said the subtitle was “Tough Love” since our industry is facing challenges (as many industries are).  Mike reminded us that we are a really cool industry and must collaborate for success.

The next session dove into the details of VMM usage, with technical information provided by Mehdi Mohtashemi of Synopsys and Dr. Ning Guo of Paradigm Works.  Mehdi gave practical usage guidelines for VMM applications, and Dr. Guo described how to generate VMM-compliant environments.

The final session was dedicated to Liberty as applied to various (all) design flows.  Rajesh Kumar from Synopsys gave an in-depth update on new features in the library format, and the audience was able to ask detailed questions about syntax and usage.

As always, there were prizes, valuable Q&As, and good hallway discussions that could only be experienced by attending the 21st Interoperability Forum in person.  (Special treats for me were meeting a wonderful coworker, Gayane Markosyan, face-to-face and comparing hair lengths with Joe Daniels.) The 22nd Forum will be next Fall in Silicon Valley – be there or be square!

EDA standards blog The Standards Game
IPL Interoperable PDK Library pcells IPL Alliance
Open SystemC OSCI SystemC TLM transaction level modeling
Mike Santarini Rich Goldman
VMM Verification Methodology Manual open verification methodology OVM
Liberty Liberty standard .lib library standards

Next week, another bloggers Birds-of-a-Feather session will be held at ICCAD.  We will gather on Wednesday, November 12, from 4-6pm at the Doubletree hotel in San Jose, California.  The event will be in the Fir ballroom, and everyone is welcome.  Be sure to come – you don’t have to register for the conference. 

There are so many stories about blogging in the standards game that I’m not sure what I’m going to talk about in my 3-minute, 3-slide timeslot.  Is there anything you’re interested in hearing from me?  Post your comments below and I will certainly consider your suggestions.

I hope to meet many of you at what should be an interesting and interactive event.

EDA standards blog The Standards Game
ICCAD bloggers BoF birds of a feature