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Richard Returns, Reports on TSMC

Two quick points today:

1. Richard Goering (noted EDA journalist) is back online! He's been covering EDA for a long time and has interesting and credible insights. He's writing a blog for Cadence at Industry Insights.
2. I went to the TSMC Technology Symposium in San Jose last week. I've been going for the last few years. These are great for getting road maps of silicon process and design technologies (TSMC Reference Flow). I wasn't sure how much information I could share from the day, but Richard has solved my problem by writing a comprehensive report TSMC Views R&D As Ticket Out Of Recession.

   One announcement that I'd like to call attention to is TSMC's integrated sign-off flow. I'd like to take a look at it. It's initially created for 65nm sign-off, and sounds like a Reference Flow on steroids. Not only are there "approved" tools, but also recommended scripts (which EDA vendors also provide) and other libraries and technology files -- apparently a complete package. I'm curious to see how it differs from what we currently use. I might learn some new tricks.

Scaling, Integration and the 3D Shuffle

Chris Edwards wrote a great look at the future of semiconductor scaling in The 3D shuffle - Shrinking Violence Blog.

I'm seeing more and more about 3D packaging, using emerging technologies such as Through Silicon Vias (TSV). Might this solve some of the thorny integration issues people are expecting? If 3D is a good answer for Logic + Memory, it may also be a good match for CPU + GPU. Already, in the CPU space, we're seeing a fair amount of package-level multicore integration, rather than "natively" putting all the cores on a single die. For example, check out AMD No Longer Feels the Need to Go “Native” .

Why Oracle Bought Sun?

You heard it here second. Lou Covey blogged in State of the Media: Oracle. Sun. Brilliant. that Oracle's play for Sun is part of a scheme to break into the Hardware or (shudder) EDA industries!

It's a provocative theory, but would leave me very, very surprised if that were Oracle's motivation. Perhaps they could improve the financials of the EDA business, or juice up EDA's database architectures. But more likely, it seems to me is that Oracle is looking for control of software assets like Java and MySQL. The server and chip businesses just seem way beyond Oracle's core competencies. I'd guess those may be spun off or otherwise de-emphasized.

5/7 Larry says they're keeping all the hardware business.

President Obama Emphasizes Engineers' Contributions

President Obama gave a speech this week providing a vision for the American economy. He outlined "pillars" of a new economy built "on rock".

I was heartened to hear the President's recognition of the value of scientists and engineers, and their abilities to contribute to a sound economy:

one of the changes that I would like to see — and I’m going to be talking about this in weeks to come — is once again seeing our best and our brightest commit themselves to making things — engineers, scientists, innovators. For so long, we have placed at the top of our pinnacle folks who can manipulate numbers and engage in complex financial calculations. And that’s good, we need some of that. But you know what we can really use is some more scientists and some more engineers, who are building and making things that we can export to other countries.

-- The Obama Speech on the Economy - Capital Journal - WSJ

Searching for Silicon Valley

(New York Times photo)

Interested in visiting Silicon Valley, or brushing up on your technology industry history? Check out American Journeys - Searching for Silicon Valley; a Place and a State of Mind from the New York Times.

Nano Edutainment

UC Berkeley's considerable contributions to science and engineering range from the creation of SPICE to the The Nano Song Go Bears!

Happy Birthday SPICE

Another day, another birthday. Coming soon is a big one, for SPICE [Wikipedia], one of the very first EDA programs. It is still vibrant and vital today, after 36 years of the semiconductor revolution.

Read more about its history and how it works in Circuit Simulation - Part One - SPICE Turns Thirty-Six. It's a nice article where you will either learn a little circuit theory, or have flashbacks of courses you took a long time ago. I used to be able to do these equations in my sleep. Let's not talk about my "current" capability.

If you'd like to learn more about SPICE, look for the blogger to post more parts in his series. There's also The SPICE Book, authored by one of the SPICE developers.

Happy Birthday RFC

How the Internet Got Its Rules - NYTimes.com celebrates a successful collaboration model that's 40 years old: RFC, or Request for Comments.

these humble documents shape the Internet’s inner workings and have played a significant role in its success

What history! What an achievment! It represents the best of engineering culture, to have an open dialogue to craft the best solution (brainstormimg + compromise). And, it only leaves me wondering, why can't we have more true collaborative standards in our industry?

Why Functional Programming Matters

I've always been a wannabe hardcore software engineer (it was my emphasis for my M.S.), but in reality, am JAPH.

Nevertheless, I enjoy keeping up with new software development methodologies and languages. As far as fluency, I'm in the age of Java and OOP, but I enjoyed this clear explanation of Why Functional Programming Matters in the "Daily Vim" blog.

Even if you aren't interested in new languages just for the sake of it, this snippet shows why it's relevant to strong emerging trends in CPUs, GPUs, and productive programming paradigms:

At this point, the resounding question in your mind is probably, "why bother?" Well, fortunately there's a very strong reason behind all this shifting of methodology, and that's concurrency.

Daily Vim: Goodbye Vim, Hello Emacs

Oh no! What a way to begin the month! Just read of the loss of a fellow traveler, going to the dark side in Daily Vim: Goodbye Daily Vim, Hello Emacs. Emacs, of course, is a prime example of Zawinski's Law.

EDA Industry Update

Sramana Mitra posts her latest financial analysis of the leading EDA vendors at EDA Industry Update.

Some reactions to her points:

• Synopsys is king of the hill. Yes, obviously.
• Cadence should acquire Magma. I could see this happening. That's the kind of thing Cadence has done in the past, and Magma is getting small.
• Bring back Joe Costello. It would certainly energize the industry, but I doubt he'd want to, or that he could fix things alone.

Synopsys Lynx, a New Old Product

I'm at SNUG this week. I'll try to post more of a trip report after the fact. Aart's keynote speech yesterday was very listenable, as always. But I didn't feel there were a lot of major announcements or new insights.

One of the new announcements was a surprise to me: a flow management system called "Lynx". There's no way I can describe it better than harry … the ASIC guy � Synopsys Lynx Design System Debuts at SNUG.

I'm curious to learn more about it -- there's a SNUG session on it tomorrow. I'm a sucker for a pretty GUI, and I love automation. But I wonder how much business opportunity there is for this -- what is the target customer, and what is the value to them? Many large companies may already have something in place. But for a company just starting up a flow, this could be a quick start to "best practices" results.

Just don't call it a Framework!

Real-Time SNUG Tweets

Woz Dances to a Different Beat

Most all of you must be familiar with Steve Wozniak (personal site, Wikipedia article), legendary personal computer designer and Apple Computer co-founder. "Woz" has long been one of my hardware-design idols, alongside geniuses such as Seymour Cray (R.I.P.).

I've followed Woz's trajectory for a long time. I've seen him speak a couple of times, including as a featured guest at the Synopsys Users Group conference a couple of years ago. As a hardware engineer, you can't help but love Woz. He is truly a gifted designer, and his enthusiasm and passion are clear and sincere.

As Apple co-founder, he's a pretty wealthy guy, which gives him the luxury of pursuing whatever wild idea strikes his fancy. He's had a couple of brushes with pop culture (dating an actress/comedianne), but came out in a big way last week with an appearance on Dancing With the Stars.

You can see his debut here Wow! Woz continues to command my respect as a passionate engineer with absolutely no pretense. I can't help but laugh and wonder if this is the best "15 minutes of fame" moment for an electrical engineer, though. Rolling in on a Segway? Pink Boa? Ah, Woz, you really don't care what others think, do you? I love and respect you for that.

Tonight is his second appearance on DWTS. Hopefully it won't be his last. Check him out. And, in solidarity with our engineering brethren everywhere, give him your support. It would be sweet if some hackers got into the phone system and pumped up the votes for his performance. [the roots of Woz's technology wizardry began with "phreaking" phone systems to get free long-distance phone calls!]

SNUG is Coming to San Jose

It's that time of year for my favorite industry conference, SNUG: Synopsys Users Group - San Jose. I'm on the Technical Committee, so I might be biased. I hope to see you there!

At a glance:

SNUG San Jose 2009
March 16 - 18, 2009 

Location: Santa Clara Convention Center 
5001 Great America Parkway
Santa Clara, CA 95054

Here's the schedule. Contact your Synopsys support person or sign up online.

Cost-Reducing IEEE

Two years ago, in better economic times, I wrote a post Wondering about the IEEE, questioning whether being an IEEE member worth the US$140 dues.

Now, of course, the economy is in worse shape, my company is cost-reducing with a vengence, and IEEE membership is up to $169 (a 20% increase by my calculator). To put it politely, what is the IEEE thinking? It's like some government bureacracy run amok, growing on auto-pilot.

All of the concerns about benefits vs. cost, and the unease of not having a home for ASIC design and EDA, still exist. Now the cost has risen much faster than inflation and money is tighter. Time for us to part ways, until "some sunny day". (cue Vera Lynn/Pink Floyd)

Twittering Away EDA

Twitter mania is running wild! (I reserve judgement on whether this is a good thing.) In the early days, Twitter was only a factor in events like the MacWorld keynote, when so many geeks would be riffing on Steve Jobs' speech, it would crash Twitter's servers.

Now, I hear Twitter mentioned on MSNBC every five minutes (weird). And last week, Twitter came to an EDA conference. JL Gray and like-minded attendees "tweeted" their impressions of DVCon in real-time. JL followed up the conference with a recap via that "old-school" platform, blogging: Cool Verification: DVCon 2009 Wrap Up: Attendance.

I followed the DVCon tweet stream from time to time, but I felt you really had to be there. I didn't "get" many of the references, though it sometimes left me wishing for a live webcast to see what the excitement was about. Personally, I think Twitter is too hyped-up. Maybe, when most everyone is carrying a cell phone or MID with low-cost unlimited data access, it will create new ways of interacting and experiencing conferences. But for now, it is something to be figured out by early adopters.

EDA, Dead or Alive

Almost as good as attending the DVCon panel EDA: Dead or Alive? is reading Mike Demler's notes at The World is Analog: EDA: Dead or Alive? Apparently this is the successor to John Cooley's infamous Troublemakers panel.

Peggy said EDA tools are overpriced? Huh! How about giving me a quality product that doesn't crash so often! Makes Microsoft Office look like mission-critical software. [a pet peeve of mine which I hope to expand on in a future post]

Back to School Resources

In this tough economy, we should all be conscious of our inventory of job skills, with an eye on keeping up-to-date and marketable. Thanks to the Web, there's a wealth of training materials available online, such as at TechOnline University Fundamentals. The courses are generally short and practical. Certainly something to check out before buying expensive textbooks or enrolling in traditional classes.