Cool Verification

My first EDA conference was one year ago at DVCon 2007.  At the time I was thrilled to get the opportunity to speak with vendors about upcoming new products and to listen to presentations about the various methodologies people were using to solve real world problems.  The same general feeling held true at DATE last April and even to some extent at DAC.  By CDNLive! in September the feeling was long gone. 

This evening as I wandered around the DVCon Expo reception, I had very little desire to quiz the vendors on their products.  What I wanted instead was to see a list of the things that were different this year from last so I could quickly decide where to focus my limited time and energy.  So, on that note I'd like to ask if any of the vendors presenting at the conference this week or demonstrating their wares at the Expo are willing to describe to me exactly why I should be interested in speaking with them this year (vs. last year).  If so, please send me a note or catch me in person tomorrow or Thursday.  Otherwise, I'll just sit back and wait for the dance war competition on Thursday afternoon! (BTW... Cliff seemed to find the title of the post amusing... Stew Stu?  Not so much ;-). 

For the last several months I've been on the mailing list of Richard Goering's new media venture - SCDsource.  The newsletter and associated website were created back in the fall shortly after Goering was laid off from EETimes.  SCDsource is billed as a new kind of news source for the hardware design community. 

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.

I was looking through my web stats the other day when I noticed something strange - I was getting referrals from the DAC homepage.  A quick glance at the site revealed that Cool Verification is listed as one of several "industry blogs."  Here's the complete list from the DAC site:

• Adventures in ASIC
• ASIC-SoC-VLSI Design
• Cool Verification
• Deep Chip
• EDA Blog
• EDA Confidential
• Eric's Blog for Work
• Gabe on EDA
• John's Semi-Blog

This is the first time I've seen the DAC site mention blogs.  A closer look reveals they've also added a discussion of blogging to the press credential requirements. 

Last year when I attended DAC I managed to meet up with John Ford, author of DFT Digest.  Perhaps this year I'll get a chance to meet some of the other folks who blog on the topic of EDA.

Writing this article got me thinking that it's just about conference season again.  First up February 19-21 is DVCon in San Jose.  Following soon thereafter is DATE in Munich March 10-14.  SNUG in San Jose, CDNLive in Munich and DAC will carry us out through the middle of the year. 

This should be an interesting year.  We're all still anxiously waiting for the release of the OVM library (shh, don't tell anyone) from Cadence and Mentor.  It's also a year that (in my opinion) will start to see an even broader adoption of SystemVerilog, and perhaps some surprises from Synopsys as well.