Archive for May, 2010

I’m excited to tell everyone that my book is now available! It comes in hardcover, paperback, Kindle, and eBook through Amazon.com, Synopsys Press, and other book outlets. Rick Jamison, who created amusing cartoons for the book, and I are blatantly proud of our accomplishment. If you’ll be at the Design Automation Conference, stop by The Standards Booth for a complimentary copy.

“The Ten Commandments for Effective Standards” is a short book that expands upon my blog posts of the same name. I also wove in ideas from my blog readers’ comments on those posts. I included chapters on why I believe standards are important and what I think effective standards are. The book summarizes what I learned over many years (how did that happen?) of participating in creating EDA standards.

I’m quite sure that the challenges we face in the EDA industry when we standardize are similar to those in other technical fields. I found countless examples of challenges in other standardization efforts and included some interesting ones in the book. I hope my book will be of value to people involved in standards everywhere.

As I say in the Introduction, I realized that writing a book about how to create effective standards is like writing a book on parenting. There’s no single right way to do it and opinions abound. I look forward to lively discussions about my book.

Last year, I helped create “Conversation Central” for the 46th DAC. It turned out to be a huge success. I received countless requests to do it again, so naturally I obliged. If you know me, you know I set the bar high for myself. Repeating the same kind of Conversation Central as last time would have been interesting, but that would have been too easy.

Thus, welcome to Conversation Central for the 47th DAC: a live “radio talk show” style event that will also be broadcast online to anyone in the world who wants to participate. Thanks to the power of social media, we’re going to bring the conversations beyond Synopsys’ booth on the DAC show floor.

There will be 27 sessions with different topics of interest and special guests for each. The schedule will be published soon. Instructions are also coming for how to listen in via phone or computer and for asking questions of the guests during the sessions.

When the 47th DAC is over, Conversation Central won’t end. We’ll continue to bring you regular programs on a variety of subjects. Be sure to let me know if you’d like to be a guest or have an idea for a future topic.

Whether you’ll be at DAC or not, I invite you all to join the conversation!

P.S. The Twitter hashtag for the 47th DAC is #47DAC. Follow the conversation there, too!

The importance of a patent policy to a standards organization cannot be understated. I contend that mixing standards with patents is the most difficult aspect of standardization today. Intellectual property rights are valuable assets for their holders, and it’s appropriate that patent rights be protected. When a standard is developed that necessarily will infringe on a patent in order to be implemented, that patent is known as an essential patent. Holders of essential patents can choose to give up their rights, license their patents, or protect their rights by not participating nor contributing their patents to the standard.

Sounds straightforward, right? Yet, how does a standards organization ensure that companies don’t attempt to sneak essential patents into standards so they can later assert their rights? And how does the organization deal with the myriad of nuances of this scenario? Should the organization simply look the other way and let the court system deal with any consequences?

Standards organizations do have some responsibility to help ensure that patents and standards play nicely together. One of many articles about the infamous Rambus case illustrates the situation of a standards body – JEDEC in this case – being heavily involved in the outcome of an undesirable standards game. Of course, Rambus wasn’t the only company to take advantage of JEDEC, and JEDEC wasn’t the only standards organization to have been gamed this way.

JEDEC revamped its patent policy and published it last week, tightening up language and clarifying practices for contributors to their standards.

The IEEE has a prestigious award for individuals who make outstanding contributions to electrical and electronic engineering standards. This year I was appointed to the committee that will select the 2011 recipient. The award is called the “IEEE Charles Proteus Steinmetz Award”, and as the newbie on the selection committee I did a little research I thought I’d share.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz was a fascinating man. He was born in Prussia in 1865 and suffered from severe, genetic birth defects. Yet, he was a brilliant mathematician and physicist. He was also a socialist, which forced him to flee to Zurich when socialist activities were banned by the German government and the German police began investigating him.  He ultimately emigrated to the United States at age 24, and after several years decided that socialism would never work in America.

Among other significant accomplishments, inventing and advancing the development of alternating current is attributed to Charles Proteus Steinmetz. Did you know that the first (and maybe the ugliest) standards war was between alternating current and direct current? If you’d like to hear that story, I’ll write about it in a future post.

During his career, Dr. Steinmetz served as President of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) for a couple of years. AIEE merged with the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE), and the organization became the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). Thus, naming the award after Dr. Steinmetz not only honors him but also sets the example for recipients of the IEEE Charles Proteus Steinmetz Award.

Who can be nominated? Anyone who had demonstrated important contributions to standards in the fields of electrical or electronic engineering. Who can submit a nomination? Anyone. The only exceptions are people who currently serve in certain authoritative roles within the IEEE.

Details about the award, nomination process, and past recipients can be found on IEEE’s website which will be updated for the 2011 award. If you know anyone who might be eligible to receive the award, be sure to let me know.

“No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions” – Charles Proteus Steinmetz