I’m now able to share with EDACafe readers the news about an exciting evening panel we’re co-hosting with OneSpinSolutions titled, “Ride with the Verify Seven,” during DVCon Monday, February 27.

It will be moderated by industry luminary Jim Hogan of Vista Ventures and features six well-known and readily recognizable verification leaders who grew their companies from startup to medium-sized industry player:

• Andy Stein, Vice President of North American Sales from Avery Design Systems
• Adnan Hamid, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Breker Verification Systems

• Phil Moorby, Chief Architect of Montana, a Phil Kaufman Award recipient presented to him by the ESD Alliance and IEEE CEDA for inventing the Verilog language
• Raik Brinkmann, President CEO of OneSpin
• Prakash Narain, Real Intent’s President and CEO
• Rick Carlson, Verific’s Vice President of Sales and advisor to seven early-stage startups

When it comes keeping the growth of design productivity exponential, a key barrier that fell in the past ten years is due to the increasing use of social media, which set free the exchange of focused, expert knowledge, from user to user.  On the web we have very helpful company-curated user forums; and often even better, the stack-exchanges which are user curated, where readers up-vote the most helpful content and as a result these are often the very best place to visit to get unstuck from a problem you recognize you have.

These forums and posts are all reactions against the underfunded, or poorly directed tech publishing team, tasked perhaps by marketing (or the simple desire to keep their employment) to only document what works; and never mention an alternative solution.

Of course a web search will also take you to the swampy places where all you find is others who are stuck with similar problems, and they just bemoan that the vendor doesn’t care, or take you through a litany of things they’ve tried that didn’t work.  One also finds the beginning of tutorials, part one of what was to be a twenty volume tutorial where the blogger planned to impart the wisdom of the ages for how to build the magical thing – and only part one got written – and even that is now out of date.

So, search works great — when you have an idea what the problem is, and you are following a large crowd who has been there before, and they’ve taken the time to create hints.

Going hands-on at last year’s Designer/IP track session, with no marketeers in sight!

Millions of people are talking about when we will stop driving our cars, many thousands are working on it, and six among those thousands made an appearance Tuesday evening, February 7th, on a panel at IEEE’s International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco.

Over the course of the hour, the six speakers outlined their different visions of the technical roadmap that must be pursued to achieve fully autonomous cars. Of the six speakers, however, only three actually attempted to answer the panel prompt and their answers were wildly disparate.

So when will we stop driving our cars? 1) It’s impossible to know. 2) Not until 2030. 3) We already are beginning to stop driving our cars.

The panel was moderated by a senior Intel engineer, heavily involved in the company’s newly organized business unit specifically focused on autonomous driving systems.

Ted Miracco is CEO of SmartFlow Compliance Solutions, a company based in Los Angeles that provides automated tools to help software vendors combat piracy, copyright infringement, and under-compliance. At the company’s recent Anti-Piracy Summit, Miracco was impressed by four specific concerns of executives attending from the EDA and IP industries. The following blog, contributed by Miracco, describes those issues.

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The Four Hacking Issues Weighing on the Minds of EDA Executives

I like spending time with executives from the EDA industry, in part because I used to be an executive in that industry. Last fall at the SmartFlow Anti-Piracy Summit, I had conversations with a dozen or so executives and heard a new urgency in their voices for help solving the challenge of unauthorized use of software and semiconductor IP.

A significant factor in getting any job done properly is having the right tools. This is true whether you are building a kitchen, fixing your car or developing embedded software. Of course, it is the last of these that I am interested in here. I have been evangelizing on this topic for years (decades!). The problem is that there is a similarity – arguably superficial – between programming an embedded system and programming a desktop computer. The same (kind of) languages are used and software design techniques are fairly universal. However, there are really some major differences …

I recently started to develop an appreciation for the sport of cricket during our Oski company-wide, off-site meeting in beautiful Udaipur, India. Before that, if you had mentioned cricket, I would be more likely to think of the bugs I hear chirping on summer nights and that sometimes find their way into my garage.

John Wright speaks at the Oski off-site

However, that began to change on January 26, 2017, when Oski employees were treated to a talk by legendary cricket player and coach, John Wright.  Wright was propelled to stardom when he enjoyed a successful 5-year stint as the first foreign coach of the Indian national team between 2000 and 2005.  With the support of Indian captain, Sourav Ganguly, he transformed the Indian cricket team from a group of super-talented individuals, but under-achievers as a team, to consistent world champions. Highlights included beating the Australian juggernaut, who were on a run of sixteen consecutive test wins, and beating Pakistan on their home turf for the first time in more than 50 years.

Interestingly, it was not through a new team system nor by adding new individual skills that this was accomplished.  As an outsider, he succeeded against all odds by a series of small, thoughtful behavioral changes.  Let’s examine these changes and the lessons we can learn from them as formal verification engineers.

John Wright answers questions after his talk

1. Team First

“Don’t do anything to hurt the team”, says Wright. A winning team must have good chemistry. They must portray an image of being the model team. That means individuals must prioritize the team’s schedule and not keep everyone else waiting. It means warming up as a team before games; treating each other with respect; having a positive attitude, while not being afraid to deal with the negative. This is the responsibility of all team players, but the tone is set by the leaders, starting with the team captain and coach.

Please save Monday evening, February 27, during DVCon for an entertaining but informative and inspiring panel discussion with today’s emerging verification leaders. Sponsored by the ESD Alliance and OneSpin Solutions, the discussion will be moderated by the always enthusiastic Jim Hogan who will tease out how they are succeeding in a market where much larger competitors also participate.

We plan to start right after the DVCon Expo Booth Crawl that runs from 5-7pm. We’ll have drinks and snacks and there will be planey of opportunity to network. DVCon will be held at the Doubletree Hotel, San Jose, Calif.

Watch this space for more details on who’s participating in the discussion and the room where it will be held.