In Conversation
infrastructure including IP management . Design complexity does not scale equally with organizational complexity ( small teams can design complex products ), so we provide solutions for that middle ground as well .
ELE Times : What are the main key points IC Design engineers should look for in an EDA tool before buying ?
Harry Foster : The success of the electronics industry has been grounded in both EDA innovation and automation . But equally important in the successful adoption of advanced EDA tools is robustness and quality in the generated results . Tools that do a second-rate job can actually miss errors or potentially identify errors that really aren ’ t there ( false positives ). In the case of false positives , you can waste a significant amount of time trying to find an error that doesn ’ t actually exist . And if you actually have a design that has an error , and it doesn ’ t get detected before you send it to manufacturing , it can lead to chips needing to be re- spun . This can lead to market delays and depending on the
Mentor Graphics also offers embedded software development tools . Software is of course becoming a greater component of modern systems , especially emerging IoT devices and advanced market cost millions or even billions of revenue . And if an error automotive designs . isn ’ t detected until a product is out in the market , in some cases it ELE Times : Growing introduction of Internet of Things ( IoT ) can lead to product recalls . devices tell us something about design verification challenges ?
Kindly provide a brief introduction to “ Portable Stimulus ”
ELE Times : How different it is to develop software for manufacturing giants and for scholars and researchers ?
Harry Foster : During the past decade or so , the electronics industry has done a remarkable job of adopting new advanced verification technologies to address rising design complexity . For example , the introduction of constrained-random simulation helped verification engineers generate several orders of magnitude more stimulus using automation versus hand-written directed test . The introduction of commercial verification IP provided engineers more-efficient ways to interact with complex interface protocols . The UVM standard brought reuse methodology to verification environments , both in terms of infrastructure and best practices . However , while these techniques have done wonders to improve block- and subsystem- level verification , they have not scaled effectively ( nor productively ) to the SoC , full chip or system-level verification process , nor will they do so in the future .
Harry Foster : Mentor Graphics EDA tools and solutions have been successfully adopted by both industry and academia , and we see no difference in the way we develop our tools for our various stakeholders . Both industry and academia are very important to us . In fact , we actively participate in both academia and industry educational programs and partnerships to help train the next generation of innovators . Through our company ’ s Higher Education Program , Mentor Graphics strives to develop long term relationships with engineering colleges and universities around the world . For example , Mentor Graphics has partnered with more than 1200 colleges and universities worldwide . The program provides : access to millions of dollars ’ worth of Mentor Graphics software for a minimal customer support fee ; free access to regular customer training for all faculty / staff in the department ; and access to technical support services for faculty and staff of the department . These partnerships are mutually beneficial as their research helps us better foresee what design challenges are on the horizon and proactively develop technologies to overcome those challenges .
ELE Times : Can EDA technology for designing integrated circuits be applied to the design of systems ? Kindly tell us something in this perspective .
To address this evolution ( and revolution ) in complex design , Mentor Graphics provides EDA tools to design complete electronic systems , from the chip ’ s packaging , to printed circuit boards , to multiple boards integrated with connectors and cables , to systems of systems such as automobiles and factory equipment , integrating increasingly with mechanical / mechatronic tools to create smart cars , smart factories and even smart cities .
ELE Times | 52 | March , 2017
Veloce Strato OS enterprise-level operating system forms the foundation for a common infrastructure for all Veloce Strato hardware and software applications .
Harry Foster : The term “ system design ” or what actually constitutes a system is ever evolving with increasing degrees of integration and minimizations . Today , thanks to EDA technology and silicon process miniaturization , you can integrate essentially the compute power of entire electronic system into a single chip ; consisting of multiple processors , digital logic , analog , mixed- signal , and often radio-frequency functions .
A new way of thinking about verification is essential to productively and effectively verify today ’ s designs . What is required for SoC verification is the ability to generate system-level use-case test scenarios . These scenarios often require software running on an embedded processor that must be synchronized with interface stimulus and events . Scenario-based testing is difficult to achieve using existing verification approaches ( such as UVM ). In addition , today ’ s verification engineers want to describe the intent of a given test , and then let automation generate the low-level details for the appropriate test scenario . Finally , today ’ s verification engineers want to describe the intent of a test once , and then allow automation to retarget the test across different verification engines ( e . g ., simulation or emulation or prototyping ). The Accellera Portable Stimulus Standard is currently being developed to meet these goals , and Mentor Graphics is activity involved . In fact , Mentor Graphics has been a leading researching in graph-based portable stimulus for many years . For example , our Questa in Fact solution is the industry ’ s most advanced Portable Stimulus test bench automation solution .