The Way Forward for IC Design. October 1, 2014

Transcription

1 The Way Forward for IC Design October 1, 2014

2 Today s Speakers and Agenda Introduction Randy Smith, VP Marketing, Sonics, Inc. The Software Development Perspective on Agile Davis Frank, Director of Internal Applications, Pivotal Software, Inc. The SoC and Hardware Design Team Perspectives on Agile Neil Johnson, Principal Consultant, XtremeEDA The FPGA Development Perspective on Agile Andrew Putnam, Principal Hardware Engineer, Microsoft June 9,

3 Current Design Challenges Today s primary design challenges have always existed Do more with less Get it done faster, and cheaper Get it right the first time And so on First to market wins 70 percent share Design cycles are so short that the requirements are not fully known at project start Requirements will change part way through the project Time to market is essential, so a highly interdependent product can cause schedule delays HW/SW Co-design is an absolute requirement June 9,

4 Reasons for Changing IC Methodology Some drivers for change Consumer products Short release cycle Low power, but still always on Security Design costs IoT Starting design without a complete spec Makimoto s wave shifts emphasis from standardization to customization System companies are in best position to assume product risk Desired new attributes Ability to make reasonable progress with an incomplete specification To better solve modern design challenges: Time-to-market (6 months) Lower power Security Ability to easily ship ontime /early with a reduced feature set Improved relationship between architectural, logical, physical, and software design June 9,

5 What an Agile IC Methodology Might Look Like Agile IC Methodology Specification Time Prototype Waterfall Design Time Simulation Verification Emulation Physical Design Change the slope! The more vertical the better! June 9,

6 Agile SW Development The Agile Manifesto was written in February of 2001, at a summit of seventeen independentminded practitioners of several programming methodologies. The participants didn't agree about much, but they found consensus around four main values: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan Test & Feedback Requirements Development Architecture & Design The Agile movement proposes alternatives to traditional project management. Agile approaches are typically used in software development to help businesses respond to unpredictability. June 9,

7 Progress Some companies are trying to implement Agile methods on their (hard, but not impossible w/o EDA tool support) LinkedIn groups have more than 800 members combined Some traction in trade press Some discussion at IEEE Computer Society This very meeting at DAC! June 9,

8 SoC Architects Drive Both SW & HW SW Development of HW-independent SW Dev. of HWdependent SW and system architecture exploration Large (and growing) teams dependent upon architecture SoC architect responsible for many views of architecture Normally disparate Increasing complexity of SW and HW results in increased costs and delays HW Performance analysis architecture validation and RTL verification and implementation June 9, 2015 Page 8

9 Brainstorming 1) Adopt Requirements Management (RM) tools Requirements management is the process of documenting, analyzing, tracing, prioritizing and agreeing on requirements and then controlling change and communicating to relevant stakeholders. It is a continuous process throughout a project. A requirement is a capability to which a project outcome (product or service) should conform. Tracks the links why decisions were made Links to Jira, bug tracking, enhancement requests, market reports Commercial tools are available, many built for Agile s/w flow Examples: Jama Software, Polarion Software, many more June 9,

10 Brainstorming 2) Drive product design from the specifications Refine requirements into architectural terms via the RM tool Export the refined requirements to big the EDA tool flow Likely formats: IP-Xact (next revision), UPF (intent) 3) Continue to use RM for changes to the specification Need to develop ECO flows for logic design June 9,

11 After today We will be looking to get Agile IC Methodology recognized as an important industry trend We will try to get a more establish organization to take up the banner. Candidates: EDAC Accellera IEEE Join the LinkedIn Group Agile IC Methodolgy now, And stay involved! June 9,