Introduction

As the computer hardware industry strives to obey Moore’s Law, the telecommunication industry is following the even more rapid phenomena as described by Metcalfe’s Law: the potential number of contacts between each end computer increases rapidly, the effort to reduce the congestion at the network layer is greatly contributing to today’s system-on-chip (SoC) complexity.  As more and more optimizations are added to the upper layer protocols, low layer complexity increases to facilitate overall system feasibility.  Over the past decade, we have witnessed a dramatic increase in … Read More → "Migrating Complex Networking ASIC Verification Environment to SystemC and SystemVerilog"

Driving in the country and in the city are completely different experiences. In the country, there’s so little traffic that you really don’t need much in the way of rules. Roads intersect, maybe with a stop sign, maybe not; it’s expected that you will look as you approach and proceed with caution (unless you’re the Dukes of Hazzard). If people start moving into the area and the traffic gets busier, then at least one of the intersecting roads will need a stop sign to avoid outright chaos. If things … Read More → "When Being One-Dimensional Is A Good Thing"

Accellera’s chair, Shrenik Mehta, of Sun, has no truck with the traditional standards process. His view is that it is important to get a standard accepted and in use as soon as possible, particularly in the EDA field. Accellera’s name reflects this, and its method of working is designed to achieve it.

Accellera membership is a mix, reflecting its mission statement which is:

Drive the worldwide development and use of standards required by systems, semiconductor and design tool companies that enhance a language-based design automation process.

</ … Read More → "Do Converging Standards Meet at Infinity?"

As the orks circled the tower in growing numbers, efforts to finish the weapon became increasingly frantic. The mechanical portion was almost complete: all of the strength and stress tests had passed, so the structure was ready to go. They had done practice shots with weights equivalent to the final payload, and distance and accuracy looked good. They fiddled a bit more with the pivots and joints to make sure that wear wouldn’t be excessive. But the real thing they were waiting for was the payload itself. This was a mystery concoction brewed up by some tall mysterious … Read More → "A Merger of Unequals"

The cards having been dealt, he took a peek at his down cards. A king… not bad… a 2… now why couldn’t we be playing “low-card-in-the-hole?” At least he wasn’t playing Texas Hold-em, the only game people seemed interested in anymore, and for reasons that were completely beyond him. There were so many other interesting varieties; hell, these days, even a plain old game of seven-card stud seemed downright novel. Jack showing; time to bet… let’s see that next card.

While not suggesting a … Read More → "Power Plays: Raising the Stakes"