I can hardly believe it. I’ve been in the EDA business since 1980 when I joined TI’s Design Automation Department after graduating from Cal Poly with my BSEE. Since 1995, much of my attention has been focused on EDA standards. I reached a moment of truth this year when I admitted, albeit reluctantly, that I could be called a standards-lifer. So, I decided it’s time to share my perspectives on what’s going on in the standards arena. Welcome to my blog - I can’t wait to hear from you! An Overview of the 21st Interoperability Forum
Posted by Karen B on November 6th, 2008
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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
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