Cool Verification

Due to the recent writers strike here in the US, most of the regular TV shows this fall were replaced with reality shows where writers were not required.  One of those shows was entitled Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann.  I have to admit to watching Dancing With the Stars, where Bruno and Carrie Ann were judges, but with Dance Wars, TV producers went too far.  The premise of the show?  Former "Dancing With the Stars" judges Bruno and Carrie Ann face off, each with a hand selected team of dancers, to see whose team can perform the best song and dance number. 

According to Kathy Embler, there were 667 registered attendees as of this morning at DVCon.  That's about 50 attendees more than at the same point last year.  The final 2007 attendee total was 707. 

According to Tom Fitzpatrick at the OVM Tutorial session this morning, OVM 1.01 has been released.  Check out the OVM site for the latest. 

Some interesting observations from the tutorial so far.  First, it looks like there are a lot of non-URM/AVM users here (based on a quick audience poll done by Tom).  VMM users looking to switch?  Could be.  According to Tom, if your simulator can't run the OVM it's not compliant to the SystemVerilog specification (hello Synopsys!).  I wonder if Synopsys would say the same thing about the VMM. 

Another thing I noticed was that Tom was clear to highlight the combined contributions of Mentor and Cadence to the OVM.  Based on the presentations I've seen most of the interesting stuff has come from Cadence.  I'd like to hear specifically what Mentor has added to the OVM, if for no other reason than it would help me if the need ever comes up to convert an AVM-based environment to use the OVM. 

I'm sitting at the airport in Austin waiting for my flight to San Jose for DVCon 2008, which starts tomorrow.  I've got my camera gear again and will try to post photos of the event as time permits.  I was ever so close to upgrading my Nikon D50 to a D300, but decided against it at the last minute after reading Ken Rockwell's discussion on the difference between a $150 and a $5000 camera which, paraphrased, tells me that it's my own damn fault that my pictures aren't as good as I'd like.  I still think I'd get some benefit out of the upgrade, but I need a better excuse to get the purchase by my wife! 

Ok, now that I've got the DVCon schedule in proper calendar format, I've been able to sit down and start looking at which sessions I'm interested in attending.  Here's what I'm planning to see so far:

FYI for those of you who clicked on my DVCon Google Calendar links within the last 15 minutes or so... There was a glitch where I was able to access the calendar but folks outside of Verilab couldn't.  I set up the calendar in a slightly different way (through my personal gmail account instead of through our GAFYD account) and updated the URLs on the DVCon 2008 page accordingly.  If you had troubles accessing the calendar please try again, and let me know if you're still having issues.

Just a reminder for those of you with busy schedules - DVCon starts next Tuesday, February 19 and runs through Thursday, February 21.  My first task when getting ready for a conference is to plan out which sessions I'd like to visit and when I'll have time for meetings.  Unfortunately, conference organizers usually make it exceedingly difficult to do so since the schedules are published in a format that requires a serious amount of cut and paste to add to your personal calendar.  I spent some time this morning and added the entire conference schedule to Google Calendar.  I've added a link to the calendar on my DVCon 2008 Info page.  Check it out and let me know if you have any questions or know of anything I should add!  You should be able to do the following with the info on that page:

• Subscribe to the calendar via Google Calendar
• View/print the calendar in a variety of formats
• Subscribe to the iCal version via Outlook 2007, iPhone, or other iCal enabled calendar applications.

If time permits, my evil side project is to massage the data into a convenient eBook format so I can read it on my Kindle (easier to read than on my candy bar smartphone).  Is there anyone else that would be interested in having access to the schedule in that format?  If not, I may just save that effort for a future conference.

At some point this afternoon I will become the proud owner of an Amazon Kindle eBook reader (special thanks to my colleagues at Verilab, btw!).  For those of you who haven't been reading newspapers, blogs, web news sites, or who have generally been living under a rock for the last few months) the Kindle is an eBook reader with a built-in 3G wireless connection, allowing users to purchase and download books, blogs, magazines, and similar content directly from Amazon.  It is also possible to transfer audio books to the device via your computer, and to email documents in HTML or MOBI format to the device directly for a small fee ($0.10/document).