Cool Verification

Back in May I announced that Verilab had joined Accellera and that specifically, I was a member of the Verification IP technical standards committee.  Later that month, I posted some comments about the discussions going on in the VIP TSC.  Then... nothing.  Of course, there have been several conference calls and a face to face at DAC since then.  Why the radio silence? 

This post will be short but sweet.  I've recently come across an interesting site, IntelligentDV, that has generated Doxygen documentation for the OVM, VMM and Teal/Truss.  I wasn't able to figure out whether the code required to generate the documentation (i.e. the filter for Doxygen) is on the site or not.  If it was that would certainly be something many people would be interested in.  Anyone with more details about the site and its contents?  If so, I'd appreciate it if you could leave a comment here or send me a mail at jl at coolverification dot com with more info.

Last Thursday at DAC I participated in a panel discussion at the OVM World Summit.  Unfortunately, I arrived a few minutes late as I went to the Marriott instead of the Sheraton (oops!).  Luckily things had just gotten started and we had an interesting discussion about the benefits of OVM and whether the industry needs a single standard language and methodology for verification. 

Update: June 18, 2008: Added links to additional commentary about the merger at the bottom of this post.

Update 2, June 18, 2008: What is Certe?  Clarified language and made reference to comments of this post for more discussion.

Last Thursday, after DAC had pretty much come to a close, my colleagues and I headed over to the California Adventure theme park for a bit of fun.  One of the highlights was the Tower of Terror, based on the old TV series, The Twilight Zone. "The Twilight Zone" always opened with the following intro from Rod Serling:

"You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension. A dimension of sound. A dimension of sight. A dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into...The Twilight Zone."

I felt like I'd entered into "The Twilight Zone" this morning when I opened my email to see mail from current and former colleagues sharing the announcement that Cadence has offered to purchase Mentor Graphics for $16 per share.  The impact such a purchase could have on the EDA industry are enormous and span many technical and business areas.  As it turns out, I'm only really qualified to comment on one - verification, so the rest of this post will be focused on that topic.  How would a merger affect the lives of those of us who do hardware verification for a living? 

The first annual Birds of a Feather Blogging session was an amazing success as far as I'm concerned.  About 45 people showed up (had to bring in extra chairs), including people such as (just to name a few):

• Peggy Aycinena (EDA Confidential)
• John Blyler (editor, Chip Design Magazine)
• John Cooley (Deepchip)
• Grant Martin (Tensilica)
• Sanjay Srivastava (CEO, Denali)
• Mark Gogolewski (CTO, Denali)
• Brian Bailey (independent consultant)
• Nanette Collins (PR and DAC Publicity Chair)
• Dave Lin (VP Marketing, Denali)
• Janick Bergeron (Synopsys)
• Richard Goering (SCDSource)
• John Cooley (Deepchip)
• John Blyler (Chip Design Magazine)
• Folks from MP associates (conference organizers)
• Other journalists, marketers, and bloggers whose names I didn't capture in my notes 
• The entire Verilab contingent (thanks all!)

Before I say anything about the event itself I wanted to give a big thanks to Sean Murphy, Harry Gries, David Lin, John Ford, and Ron Ploof for help and moral support for getting this BoF organized.  I especially appreciate the (not so) gentle prodding I received from Sean providing me with additional motivation, and also appreciated the work Sean did in inviting many of the blogging, but especially the non-blogging attendees.

Now, a quick summary of the event:

June 12, 2008: Updated the category of the post and fixed a typo.

Sad to say, I'm actually sitting at the DAC Denali party with my laptop writing this. Figured it would be worth a shot to try something different - why wait till late this evening when I can post now with the help of my camera, laptop, and AT&T WAN card! BTW... I should mention in advance that this post reads better to the tune of "Superfreak!"  Super Freaky for sure...

Finally - time to kick back and relax at the Denali party!  I'll be heading over there shortly with my laptop and camera. If I can get an internet connection on my WAN card I may even post some quick images of the event. 

One thing I really should be doing though instead of going to the party is preparing for the blogging Birds of a Feather session tomorrow evening at 6pm in room 201B - I've thrown together a few slides describing quickly the stages of blogging from a newbie's perspective, then revisiting from the perspective of what actually happens once you take the plunge!  I then discuss the benefits I feel blogging brings to the table both personally and for the industry.  Hopefully it will all be finished within about 5 minutes so we have time for the other speakers and some in-depth discussion with attendees.  Anyone else have any thoughts as to what we should cover?  John Busco had some good ideas of topics to discuss (I've shamelessly lifted them and will be proffering some of them as discussion topics tomorrow evening).  Feel free to add additional topics below.

Day one at DAC is half way over.  The general perception I've gotten from many of the vendors is that things seem slow.  Many didn't realize that it is cheap/free to get in the exhibition hall all week and were surprised at the turnout as they thought it was "free Monday."  Turnout was light at my presentation this morning as well, though perhaps "light" isn't the right word for it. I ended up giving my talk about SystemVerilog Interoperability to Janick Bergeron (Synopsys, author of the VMM book), Cliff Cummings (Sunburst Design, SystemVerilog trainer and member of the SV and Verilog standard committees), Allan Crone (Mentor Graphics OVM guru), and Mark Glasser (Mentor Graphics OVM guru).  All I needed was to have someone like Mike Stellfox or Stan Krolikoski from Cadence join us and we could have had our own panel discussion on VMM vs. Cadence OVM vs. Mentor OVM!  To say I was nervous would be a bit of an understatement :-).

I've been buried the last few weeks but finally have a few spare minutes to let everyone know what I'm up to at DAC this year.  Unlike last year where I basically just wandered around taking photos and writing blog posts, this year I'm giving a presentation, running a Birds of a Feather session, and participating in at least one panel (but possibly two).