Archive for April, 2009

Yesterday was Earth Day which reminded me to think about – and carry out – activities that help sustain our planet’s natural resources. Besides the obvious: reduce-reuse-recycle, turn off lights, lower the thermostat, drive slower (OK, I lied on that one), the work I do in the standards game actually contributes to the “green” movement we see all around us.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a website dedicated to green standards. The IEEE is specifically called out here as a standards organization that the EPA has worked with. This year, I’m a member of four of the IEEE Standards Association governing committees that oversee the process of IEEE standards development, so I realized that I’m an indirect contributor to the mission of the EPA.

Within the IEEE-SA there are many standards and projects underway for new standards that will address specific areas where energy usage and materials consumption can be reduced. For instance, a goal of the “Standard for Ubiquitous Green Community Control Network Protocol”, aka P1888, is to monitor and manage energy consumption in facilities and buildings. The 802.3 group is working on a lower-power Ethernet technology and investigating greener power adaptors. And, the 1801 standard supports modern practices for designing ICs that use less power.

These are but a fraction of the standards being developed and already deployed that can help our industry build more environmentally-friendly electronics for a greener future.
EDA standards blog The Standards Game
Earth Day green sustainability green standards EPA
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In a previous post, I discussed participation in standards activities and why the time cost of participation can be worth it. I said I would talk about the monetary cost of standards organization fees at a future date. That future date is today.

My company, Synopsys, belongs to a lot of standards organizations. More than 36 encompassing more than 100 working groups, actually. We pay a fair amount of money to these organizations. Around 600,000 dollars per year. That’s a lot of cash. We believe we’re getting a positive ROI, and we reevaluate our memberships with each budgetary cycle.

The cost of standards membership fees is not a new issue. About 10 years ago, I was a participant in the Standards Committee within the EDA Consortium. (For those of you outside the electronic design automation industry, EDAC is our trade association.) At the time, there was concern that the EDA industry was spending a lot of money on standards organizations and not getting enough value in return. There was quite a bit of turmoil in the standards game, and both the EDA industry and its customers were unhappy. (Here’s more on the history of the EDA standards game.)

The EDAC Standards Committee developed and published a Funding Report that identified how much the EDA industry as a whole was paying to its standards organizations. It was a big number. The Standards Committee took an interesting action, attempting to funnel all standards dues payments from EDAC member companies through the Standards Committee, with the goal of paying only the standards organizations that provided a real benefit to the EDA industry. As you can imagine, there was much fear and resistance from the standards organizations. One of them even threatened to sue EDAC! Even though dues funneling didn’t continue, it gave everyone quite a wake-up call.

I’m certain standards organization fees are not just a concern in my industry. Any responsible business should examine the organizations to which it belongs. I’ll offer you 10 questions to ask yourself that could help you decide if you’re getting your money’s worth:

1. Does the organization have a well-defined vision?
2. Are bylaws, policies, procedures, and contracts documented and available to all members?
3. Are you comfortable with the IP policy?
4. Do you deem the processes as fair to you and your customers?
5. Are the organization’s finances handled responsibly?
6. If you’re on the Board of Directors, part of governing committees, or contributing to working groups, are you treated with respect?
7. Does the organization produce standards in a timely manner?
8. Are the standards market-relevant?
9. Do the standards help make your products more attractive?
10. Do the standards address a need of your customers?

As always, I invite you to comment here if you have additional measures of a standards organization’s value to your business.

It’s been a while since I’ve written a “Travel Tale”, and something happened on my flight yesterday that I wanted to share. The woman who had the seat across the aisle from me was hit in the head by a laptop that fell out of an overhead bin. What does this have to do with the standards game? Not much, really, except that a lot of us fly to attend standards meetings. If this tale helps prevent another accident, it will have served its purpose.

As everyone was getting settled pre-flight – finding seats, stowing luggage, getting out reading material – the gentleman in front of me put his laptop in the overhead bin across the aisle. The bin was then full, so he closed and latched it. A minute later, someone looking for overhead space opened it. The petite woman standing in the aisle next to me cried out in pain and anger as the laptop slid out and smacked her on the top of the head!

She immediately sat in her seat, dry-swallowed some Tylenol, and worked to maintain her composure. (“How can this happen in First Class?!” did escape her lips – as if accidents are only allowed to happen in coach). The flight attendants brought her water and checked on her every few minutes. Shortly, she began to complain of a severe headache on one side of her face, neck pain, and nausea. The flight attendants asked over the intercom if there was a medical doctor on board.

Fortunately, a doctor was sitting right in front of the injured woman, and he crouched in the aisle next to me to examine her. I heard him ask her exactly what happened, where she felt pain, and about any other symptoms she was experienced. She said she had actually been hit twice in the head upon boarding the plane. The laptop was the second time – the first was by an umbrella falling out of a different bin over her husband’s seat!

The doctor borrowed my penlight to check her pupils’ reaction. He talked to her about concussion and possible epidural bleeding and urged her to stay awake on the 2-hour flight. (I’ve always wondered why a person shouldn’t sleep if they’ve sustained a blow to the head.) The doctor said he wanted to monitor her symptoms throughout the flight, but if she slept it could mask something bad happening. He said if things got a lot worse, the pilot would land the plane at the nearest airport with adjacent medical facilities.

There’s more to the story, but since I’m not writing a novel, suffice it to say that she didn’t get worse and paramedics cleared her to get off the plane before any of the other passengers.

It seems to me this accident was the result of a design flaw. The overhead bins were flat (not curved like most I’ve seen) and pulled down at an angle from the ceiling of the plane. Any items stacked on top of each other would be tilted down and follow the law of gravity. Ouch.

So, my fellow air travelers, when you hear the flight attendant say, “Items may shift during flight”, you might want to hear, “Items have shifted during flight – watch your head!”

Safe travels!

P.S. I wish that as the plane is landing, the flight attendants wouldn’t say “we’re making our final approach”. It sounds so… well… final.

You could say I’m nuts about 1801. I’ve written about this standard for low power design many times, such as its open environment within IEEE and Accellera, the fact that users and vendors alike developed it, and how real customers have been using it as a successful, working standard. From the day that two leading customers of EDA began a rally around “open, quick, inclusive”, to the creation of the Unified Power Format (UPF) in Accellera, to its finalization as an IEEE standard, I’ve felt it took the right direction in EDA interoperability.

In a nutshell, here’s why:

• It allows flexibility in creating power strategies without forcing customers into a pre-defined flow.
• It permits choice by users. For those who want a single file to contain their IC’s power intent, 1801 works. For those who want power intent constructs in their RTL, 1801 works.
• It augments multiple existing standards such as Verilog, SDC design constraints, and Liberty. It didn’t make sense to reinvent the wheel and make IC engineers retool. Interoperability is served well when current standards are leveraged.
• It offers support for legacy designs. Low power chip design didn’t start after low power standards were born. (Quite the opposite.) Being able to continue using existing code and methodologies can help designers reduce errors and increase productivity.
• It enables different EDA vendors to develop unique solutions, following the 1st Commandment for Effective Standards: cooperate on standards, compete on tools.

In the near future, the IEEE process for ensuring healthy standards will bring about the next 1801 project. When this happens, I’ll post information about how everyone can participate in the P1801 working group.