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! Good move in the Standards Game: Accellera/SPIRIT merger
Posted by Karen B on June 11th, 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.
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Recall that Accellera was formed about 10 years ago. In one decade, Accellera has successfully worked on much broader scope of standards than the original Verilog and VHDL. At first glance, the formation of Accellera was seen as merging the two competing organizations, but there was a lot of synergy in terms of impact on the design and verification flows. That’s why last 10 years of efforts have brought us standards for assertions (SVA, OVL), test compression (OCI), low power (UPF), mixed-signal (AMS), etc. All of these have been (and continue to be) beneficial to both SystemVerilog and VHDL communities. It has enabled interoperability of tools that improved productivity and reduced overall cost of design. With 10 standards “graduated” to IEEE level, I think it is fair to say that Accellera has greatly influenced (and accelerated) the design and verification methodologies.
I view this merger between Accellera and The SPIRIT Consortium as a cooperation of complementary efforts. As you point out, most designs use IPs. Therefore, future standards must consider the impact of (use of) IPs in language-based environments. That’s why Accellera and SPIRIT combination should bring significantly more value to the industry. As the adoption of IP-XACT and SystemRDL increases, one can anticipate future efforts to address bigger problems for system level design.
Just like the combination of OVI and VI created larger influence than each organization, Accellera and SPIRIT combination will have the multiplied effect on future design methodologies. It will be The Standards organization for the next decade for our industry.
I have been mulling over the implications of the SPIRIT and Accellera merger myself, and have come to support it with enthusiasm because it will bring IP-XACT and SystemRDL to a broader user base who participate in other aspects covered by Accellera, which they will complement. Having all these standards under one canopy will aid in their ultimate dissemination and utilization.