Archive for June, 2009

Two of the standards-setting organizations in the EDA industry are going to merge. This is a good move in the standards game. Accellera, which creates standards for design and verification, and the SPIRIT Consortium, which produces standards for IP block reuse, have announced that they will combine forces. I look at it from two perspectives – bigger yet smaller at the same time: synergy and economy.

The synergy of this merger will come from a bigger view of standards required for modern IC design. Today’s enormously complex chips, known as SoCs (system-on-chip), are not designed from scratch. Existing pieces of proven designs, known as IP (intellectual property) blocks – IP for short – are integrated with new design ideas to form the more advanced chip designs. The designs then go through extensive verification. Looking at standards requirements that span both IP reuse and design/verification will bring greater interoperability overall.

Synergy will also come in the form of a common path to IEEE standardization. Both Accellera and SPIRIT have the goal to transfer their standards to the IEEE for its formal ratification, moniker, and cachet. They will now be able to combine best practices and knowledge of the process.

The economy of the merger comes from member companies being able to join a single organization and pay membership fees but once. While this was not the primary purpose of the merger, it is certainly a tangible benefit that is much appreciated by businesses in the current economic climate.

This isn’t the first time a significant merger between standards organizations has occurred in my industry. Accellera itself, as you probably know, was the result of a merger between Open Verilog International (OVI) and VHDL International (VI) ten years ago. I recall one naysayer of the OVI-VI merger predicting that it would be the death of the Verilog language. Now that Verilog is SystemVerilog, I’d say that merger was a big success.

I expect nothing less from this one.

Next month, the 46th Design Automation Conference will recognize a new dimension: social media conversations. Social media is emerging as a new “standard” for communicating with customers, coworkers, friends, and family. My company, Synopsys, and I are going to host a series of intimate-yet-open discussions focused on social media-related topics of particular interest to the EDA community.

The kitchen table-style conversations will take place at “Conversation Central,” a room located in the front of Synopsys’ main booth at the DAC exhibition. Conversation Central will be open to everyone at DAC. We will feature a new 30-minute discussion topic every hour throughout the first three days of the conference, repeating the sessions each day.

Conversation topics will include “So You Want to Be a Blogger?,” “Twitter for N00bs,” “Competitors in Cyberspace: Why Be Friends?,” and “Job Search: How Social Media Can Help Job Seekers and Employers.”

These and other conversations will be led by well-known EDA bloggers such as JL Gray, Sean Murphy, and Harry the ASIC Guy, as well as other media experts. During the sessions I’ll host, feel free to ask me questions like whether I think Facebook is better than MySpace or if Twitter will flourish or fade. (Talk about a standards game!) You know I’m happy to share my opinions.

Each day, Conversation Central will also have a “Meet the Bloggers” session where DAC attendees can meet and mingle with “celebrity” bloggers in our industry. For those of you on Twitter, we’ll promote these sessions as Tweet-ups. Follow us on Twitter: @synopsys or search Twitter for #snps.

The full schedule for Conversation Central sessions will be published on Synopsys’ DAC website in a couple of weeks. No registration or credentials are needed to visit Conversation Central. If the room is full, you’re welcome to hang around in the doorway and start your own conversation, or come back the next day for a repeat of each session.

DAC will take place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, July 26-31 (yes, July – this is a DAClight savings year). I can’t wait to talk with you!