Rethinking Digital Design

Famed Stanford professor Mark Horowitz is giving talks on Why Design Must Change: Rethinking Digital Design. The questions raise provide refreshing distraction from the day-to-day concerns about the economy, lack of growth in EDA, and creative destruction in the semiconductor industry.

Prof. Horowitz's solution is provocative and plausible, though not a "slam dunk". I'd like him to quantify how much his approach would reduce the total cost of nanometer semiconductor design. Also, how applicable is it to domains beyond processors? Isn't it very difficult to create an "architecture generator" for each domain? For another perspective, here's a blog post reviewing the talk.