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There’s a big world of standards out there beyond electronic design automation. It’s fascinating and changing, and its nature is relevant to our smaller world of EDA. In this post, I’m going to give you a view into a new paradigm that’s emerging for international standards. I’d like to hear your perspective.

To state the obvious (at least I hope it’s obvious by now), standards continue to create new markets, fuel industry growth, and protect people’s safety and health. Saying that the world revolves around standards is an exaggeration, but there’s no denying their value.

Standards have become universal, crossing country boundaries and resulting in multi-national collaboration, development, adoption, and maintenance. Traditionally, a standard gains global relevance when a national body – which represents its individual country’s interests – formally adopts it. This means the national body is a standards broker between its country’s industries and consumers. It brings relevant, internationally recognized standards to its economy as it deems appropriate. There are several advantages to this model including scrutiny, consensus, and coordination.

Industries are now global in nature. The pressures that today’s global industries face continue to intensify: time-to-market, competitive pricing, rapid technology advancements, and insatiable consumers. And they need standards to support them.

Industry will find a way to obtain the standards they need, when they need them. The traditional model for globally-adopted standards via national bodies is certainly a viable and proven way of doing so. And yet, an interesting new paradigm is emerging as well.

The global relevance of a standard is being determined by industries themselves –through adoption by companies in their products and services, and by the consumers who purchase those products and services. These standards can be ones recommended by the national body standards brokers. Or they can be ones from grass-roots, international consortia or simply international industry collaboration. Industry will choose the standards that serve it best. Enter the new global standards paradigm.

In future posts, I’ll give examples of the new paradigm and tell you how the IEEE Standards Association is positioned to embrace the changing world of standards, becoming irresistible to industry.

(Thanks to Steve Mills, President of the IEEE Standards Association for his insights and leadership.)

For the third (second consecutive) time, I’m honored to be the General Chair of the Design and Verification Conference. This year’s DVCon promises to bring you another valuable, technically-focused program that can help you with your complex design and verification projects.

DVCon is sponsored by Accellera Systems Initiative and has its roots in users’ groups for the Verilog and VHDL standards. Because standards continue to be vital (pun intended – first person to comment below on why it’s a pun will get a free coffee from me) to the IC design and verification process, the DVCon program includes sessions on key standards such as UVM, SystemC, UPF, and IP-XACT. Update: UCIS, too.

DVCon has continued to grow over the years, with its secret to success being its mission to bring the best technical papers and tutorials to its targeted audience: IC design and verification engineers. The Technical Program Chair, Ambar Sarkar, and Tutorials Chair, Stan Krolikoski – along with their qualified committee members – have worked hard to bring you the best content.

Keeping with tradition, this year’s keynote will be delivered by Dr. Aart de Geus, our fearless leader at Synopsys. If you’ve ever heard him speak, you know that he’s charismatic and inspiring. If you haven’t heard him speak, you’re in for a treat.

We made a positive change in the schedule so that the technical program and exhibits do not overlap. You’ll be able to visit the exhibits, see the vendors’ wares, and collect tchotchkes without missing a technical session. There will also be lunches, breakfast, and hors d’oeuvres & drinks to keep your stomach full and mind sharp (well, except for the drinks).

A unique activity at DVCon is when attendees get to vote for the best paper. Unlike other conferences where the best paper is chosen by committee, DVCon lets the audience decide. The voting system is automated (we used to tally paper ballots, believe it or not) and prevents stuffing the ballot box. Be sure to participate and let your opinion be counted.

You can test your knowledge with this clever quiz by Peggy Aycinena. Post your bragging rights on her article. Then, register for DVCon and enjoy the conference.

The IEEE Standards Association is always looking for interested people to participate in their working groups and governance committees. It can be an interesting and rewarding experience if you and your company are willing and able to invest a bit of time and money (not excessive amounts, in my experience). It’s a positive side of the standards game.

Presently, there’s a search underway for people who’d like to join the Corporate Advisory Group (CAG) in 2013-2014, which is all about IEEE’s entity-based standards. Examples of these standards in the electronic design automation industry are SystemVerilog, UPF, and SystemC. Clearly these are important standards that continue to benefit us broadly. I was a member of the CAG for several years and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Here’s more information about being a member of the CAG (copied from the IEEE-SA’s Call for Candidates). If you are interested, I’m happy to help you submit your information to the IEEE-SA. You can post a comment below, email me, send a message to me via LinkedIn, or send me a tweet. By now, I think it’s pretty easy to find me.

CAG responsibilities:

- Representing corporate member insight and guidance on needs, interest, vision, products, and services provided by the IEEE
- Establish the CAG as the recognized conduit for corporate perspectives
- Serves as advocate for IEEE
- Promotes and advocates new work in the IEEE-SA in all areas of the standards life cycle
- Promotes corporate representation, membership, and entity-based activities
- Facilitates industry feedback on present and proposed methods and tools provided for development of standards and related products
- Provides sponsorship, as appropriate, and sponsorship liaison for entity-based projects
- Advises on direction of IEEE-SA Corporate Program, including budget

Candidates must be interested in managing the development of industry standards and must hold strategic positions at corporations that are at least Basic Entity Members of the IEEE-SA (or that are willing to join).

If you would like to be considered for the 2013-2014 IEEE-SA Corporate Advisory Group, please note the following rules that apply to any potential candidate.

The deadline to respond is 15 May 2012.

The slate of candidates will be forwarded to the IEEE-SA Board of Governors Nominations and Appointments Committee (N&A) for its review later in the year, with a final decision on the candidate slate to be made by the IEEE-SA Board of Governors.

Rules for IEEE-SA CAG membership:

1. The time commitment is 3-6 meetings in 2013.
The 2012 calendar is located at http://standards.ieee.org/about/sasb/2012calendar.pdf. That will give you an idea of what to expect. The 2013 calendar has not been finalized yet.
Attendance is expected at all meetings.
2. This is a non-funded position.  You are expected to fund your own travel.
3. You must have an email address, web access, and a laptop computer to bring to the meeting.
Policies and Procedures related to the CAG are located at http://standards.ieee.org/develop/policies/sa_opman/sect5.html#5.3
Corporate Program information located at http://standards.ieee.org/develop/corpchan/index.html

I hope you’ll consider this opportunity. I think it would be great to work with you. BTW, “funding your own travel” usually means “your company funds your travel”. Let me know if you want more information. I’m happy to share my experiences with the IEEE Standards Association.

After a long summer break and time for a blogging platform upgrade, The Standards Game is back in action. My blog may have had a quiet period, but the world of standards kept on turning. It’s hard to believe that Fall is here already and so many interesting events took place during The Standards Game’s vacation.

Here are a few highlights of what happened over the past few months.

Accellera and OSCI announced their plans to merge into a single organization. The new organization will combine the experience and resources of both bodies to broaden its benefit to the electronics industry. System-level design – and the standards that support it – is an integral part of System-on-Chip (SoC) design. A single standards-setting organization that addresses the interoperability requirements from the industry.

There was significant movement in the low-power standards arena. Si2 announced that they contributed relevant parts of the CPF 2.0 specification to the IEEE P1801 (UPF) working group, and  Cadence is also participating in the working group. “Convergence” is a term we’ve talked about for at least 4 years. I hope it will finally become a reality.

The Design Automation Standards Committee (DASC) held its annual election for officers. Each office is a two-year team, with two officers being elected each year. This year the positions of Chair and Vice-Chair were up for election. Stan Krolikowski was re-elected as DASC chair, and Yatin Trivedi was elected as Vice-Chair, Kathy Werner remains as Secretary and Victor Berman remains as Treasurer. (BTW, renewing and new members of DASC should pay their annuals dues before the end of 2011. At 40 $USD, it’s a bargain.)

Planning for DVCon 2012, which will include the latest in Accellera/OSCI standards, technical papers, industry-leader panels, and methodology tutorials, is well underway. Paper and panel selections are being finalized by the Techical Program Committee. Aart de Geus, CEO of Synopsys, will be the keynote speaker. (I’m the General Chair.)

Finally, the annual IEEE election was held and I was voted in as the 2012 President-Elect of the IEEE Standards Association. I will be the IEEE-SA President in 2013-14, at which time I will also have a seat on the Board of the IEEE itself. It’s going to be a great experience, I’m truly honored, and I’ll work hard to keep and increase the effectiveness of IEEE standards.

As always, I welcome your observations, ideas, and questions as we continue to participate in the standards game.

Tune in on Thursday, August 19th, at 11:00 am Pacific (18:00 GMT) to the next Conversation Central show. Our guest will be Jack Harding, CEO of eSilicon and former CEO of Cadence Design Systems.

To listen or participate, call 1 (877) 439-2972 within the US [international callers dial +1 (646) 200-4379] when the show begins. To ask a question, simply press 1 on your phone and we’ll put you on the air!

As always, the show will also be recorded for later listening on your computer, smart phone, or iPod.

Again this year, Synopsys is sponsoring a standards booth at the Design Automation Conference. I bet you think I’m going to say it’s the best ever standards booth. It’s going to be great, for sure, with an impressive line-up of speakers (see below for details) and in-depth information about key industry standards. But I have to say, IMHO, that the best ever DAC standards booth had to have been our first one, back in 1999.

Synopsys has worked hard for more than two decades to bring improved interoperability and standards to the industry. In 1999, we took a very bold step and created a DAC booth dedicated solely to standards and interoperability. We surprised people by not branding it as Synopsys’ booth and by featuring standards that everyone could use (including our competitors). I can’t tell you how excited and scared I was! We played a game named “Interopardy” and sang a song called “My Flow’s in Jeopardy”. It was a blast, and the traffic through the booth far exceeded my expectations.

*** UPDATE: Listen to the song – the lyrics are funny (if you’re an engineer, anyway). Thanks, Harry.***

Here’s Rich Goldman and me – high-fiving after a round of Interopardy. Herb Reiter is in the background.

Rich, Bonnie George, and me – having a ton of fun in the booth:

Rich, Bonnie, the well-loved Ron Waxman, me, and Angela Sutton singing, “My Flow’s in Jeopardy”. Ron was enthralled:

(Photos courtesy of Roy Stahl, inventor of Interopardy and “My Flow’s in Jeopardy”.)

Now – 10 years later – I’m looking forward to our standards booth because of its rich program and the valuable information it will provide. Will I enjoy the standards booth as much as the first time? Come see for yourself. Oh, and don’t forget to visit Conversation Central and vote for me (please) as the Next EDA Top Blogger.

This year’s DAC standards booth will have four stations focusing on standards initiatives that are vital to modern chip design: IEEE 1800 (SystemVerilog), IEEE 1801 (Unified Power Format – UPF), IEEE 1666 (SystemC), and IPL (Interoperable PDK libraries). In the theatre there will be 33 speakers (wow!) presenting on a wide variety of topics. Here’s a sampling:

“Verification Interoperability Best Practices” and “Standards Update” by Accellera

“Importance of Standards in IC Design” by the IEEE Standards Association

“Interoperable PDK Libraries – IPL” by TSMC, by SpringSoft, by Parallel Engines, by Helic, and by Synopsys

“Verification Methodology Manual – VMM” by ARM, by Verilab, and by Doulos

“VMM-Enabled VIP & Verification Planning” by Denali

“Unified Power Format” by ARM, by DOCEA, and by Elastix

“Power-Aware Debug Automation” by SpringSoft

“Troubleshooting TLM2.0 Models” by JEDA

“Fast OVP Processor Models for TLM-2.0-Based Virtual Platforms” by Imperas.

“Reach New Levels of Virtual Prototyping” by CebaTech

“Impact of EDAC on EDA Industry” by EDAC

“Bridging Abstraction Levels Between Transaction and Signal Level” by SDV

“The Truth about Power and Process Technology” by the SOI Consortium

“Automatic generation of SystemC IPs & use cases for Innovator from CoFluent Studio“ by CoFluent

“SystemC Standards Interoperability with CoWare: Get Value from Using–not Building–a Virtual Platform” by CoWare

“Flashing System-Level Power Using PowerOpt” by ChipVision

“IP-XACT and System Level Low Power Design” by IEEE 1685

“GreenSocs Interoperable Modeling Kits Working with Innovator” by GreenSocs

“Design of Heterogeneous Multi-core SoCs using SystemC, Virtual Platforms, and ASIP Design Tools” by Target Compiler Technologies

I hope you enjoy our standards booth!

Today, my company announced its “Lynx” complete design system. You can read the details and learn more from your local Synopsys office. What’s interesting and important to me, however, is that interoperability is as big of a feature in Lynx as all the rest. I’ll write more about Lynx in the coming weeks, and I invite you to think “standards”, “open”, and “interoperable” as you learn more about it.

There are dozens of standards-setting and standards-development organizations in the design automation industry.  My company is a member of more than 35 of them (yes, it’s a hefty bill)!  Of all of them, the most venerable is the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA).  Since I’ve spent the past couple of days with them, I thought I’d give you some interesting information about the IEEE and the IEEE-SA. (For my non-engineering readers, the IEEE is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.  In other words, it’s our industry’s professional association, like the AMA is for medical doctors. So you can be cool in front of others, the “IEEE” is pronounced “Eye-triple-E” instead of “Eye-E-E-E”.)

The IEEE is a global, non-profit organization for scientific and educational advancement. Its vision is “to advance global prosperity worldwide by fostering technological innovation, enabling members’ careers, and promoting community”. It’s the world’s largest technical professional society, consisting of more than 376,000 members who live and work in over 160 countries!

Here are some statistics about IEEE members:

- 50% work for industry, 21% in academia, 10.3 % in government (OK, you mathematicians, the rest are retired or students)

- 67% have a postgraduate degree

- 29% have PhDs

- 91% are male, 9% are female (now *here’s* a topic for discussion at a later time)

- 65% are from the Americas, which is a decrease of 5% from 2003

- 17% are from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, which is an increase of 3% from 2003

- 18% are from Asia (the fastest-growing region), which is an increase of 2% from 2003

The IEEE fosters technical innovation in many areas through its 38 societies and 6 technical councils which represent a wide range of technical interests. The IEEE holds more than 500 international conferences annually (how many have you attended?).  Plus, it publishes over 30% of the world’s literature in its fields with more than 1.7 million documents in the IEEE/IET Electronic Library! 

The IEEE-SA is the organization within the IEEE that develops and promotes its worldwide standards. The standards activities are sponsored by the relevant societies and councils.  For instance, all EDA standards have sponsorship from the Computer Society. The IEEE-SA Board of Governors (responsible for policy) oversees both the Standards Board (responsible for the standards process) and the Corporate Advisory Group (responsible for the entity-based standards process).

Today, the IEEE offers more than 900 active industry standards and has 400 standards projects in progress.  The work is performed by 15,000 volunteers (I’m one of them, of course).  There are 7,000 individual members and more than 80 corporate members of the IEEE-SA. Standards are offered and developed in a variety of areas including:

Aerospace Electronics
Bioinformatics
Broadband Over Power Line
Broadcast Technology
Electromagnetic Compatibility & Safety
Electronic Design Automation
Information Technology
Medical Device Communications
Nanotechnology
National Electrical Safety Code
Organic Components
Portable Battery Technology
Power Electronics
Power & Energy
Radiation/Nuclear
Reliability
Transportation Technology

The IEEE’s standards portfolio ranges from long-established engineering practices to leading-edge technologies. Its intellectual property policy is regularly updated to reflect modern understanding of IP in a standards-development arena.  (Keep watching the Rambus case – I wonder if it will end up in the Supreme Court.) Its standards reflect the standardization principles as stated by the World Trade Organization.

I would venture to say that the reason IEEE standards have so much cachet, integrity, and widespread acceptance is because they are developed under five principles: 

Due process
Openness
Consensus
Balance
Right of appeal

I also want to mention the IEEE-SA’s collaboration with other international standards organizations. The IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) has 30% of its existing standards offering built upon IEEE standards.  There is a partnership agreement in place between ISO (International Organization for Standardization, according to their website - don’t ask me why it’s not IOS) for joint development and rapid adoption.  The IEEE is a member of all 3 sectors of the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) which are Telecommunications, Radiocommunications, and Development.

The IEEE has been developing standards for more than 100 years. I’d say it’s hard to argue with the IEEE’s experience and easy to trust that the IEEE is a very good place to develop standards.

EDA standards blog The Standards Game
IEEE IEEE-SA IEEE standards

For the first time in 20 years, I’m not going to DAC.  Really.

Instead, I will be in New Jersey, participating in IEEE Standards Association meetings which just happened to coincide with this year’s DAC.

Here are a few of the things I will miss at DAC:

Hanging out with my fellow bloggers in the Synopsys booth as they meet and greet their readers.

Working in the Synopsys standards booth #1541 which features VMM, IPL, and UPF.

Sunday

WORKSHOP: Design and Verification of Low Power SoCs: An Application Oriented Approach <details>

Monday

WORKSHOP: Women in Design Automation: Networking, Negotiation, and Nonsense: Achieving Career Balance in an Unbalanced World <details>

WORKSHOP: Introduction to Chips and EDA for a Non-technical Audience (to be taught by the dynamic Pamela McDaniel in my place) <details>

LUNCH: Interoperable PDK Libraries: “The proof is in the pudding!”<details>

PAVILION PANEL: Student design contest <details>

RECEPTION: Synopsys/Sun university event <details>

Tuesday

BREAKFAST: AMS Verification and Moore’s Law… solutions for 45nm and beyond. <details>

WORKSHOP: Effective Technical Writing <details>

LUNCH: VMM User Forum: Methodology Beyond Base Classes <details>

FORUM: Accellera Technical Committee Update and Technical Excellence Award <details>

Playing Paula Abdul at the Denial (sic) Party.

Wednesday

BREAKFAST: Raiders of the Locked Art: Opening the Treasure with Interoperable PDK <details>

BREAKFAST: Accellera’s “Save Money Now! How to Reduce Costs, Complexity and Time to Market” <details>

LUNCH: Eclypse low power solution: First to Market with Differentiated Green-by-Design Electronic Consumer Products <details>

Connecting with industry bloggers at the blogger Birds-of-a-Feather session.

Thursday

PAVILION PANEL: Negotiating a Successful Career <details>

Friday

TUTORIAL: Low power techniques for SoC design <details>

I’ll miss a lot of interesting events, good technical sessions, keynote speeches, and calories.  But most of all, I will miss seeing all of my colleagues and friends.

Have a wonderful DAC, everyone!
EDA standards blog The Standards Game
DAC Design Automation Conference
VMM Verification Methodology Manual open verification methodology
UPF Unified Power Format low power design
IPL Interoperable PDK Library pcells
Women in Design Automation