Attending a conference like DVCon offers many benefits, including the opportunity for loads of hallway discussions. I was stopped continuously during DVCon by friends, colleagues and acquaintances all wanting to talk about emulation, which convinced me that it’s the hottest verification tool and topic today.

Here are five of the questions I was asked, along with the answers.

Q1. For many years, emulation has been an exotic and rather expensive tool used in very limited market segments, such as the largest processor and graphics designs. Today, it is used across the board by virtually all semiconductor industry segments. What facilitated this broad adoption?

A1. Significant improvements in the emulation’s hardware and in the supporting software. Perhaps even more significant is a dramatic drop in the cost of ownership (COO). Just consider that on a dollar-per-gate basis, the cost dropped from $5 in the early 90s to less than half a penny now. Add to that the radical enhancement in system reliability, the dramatic improvements in the usage model, the multi-user and remote access capabilities and it’s a COO that is a small fraction of what it used to be a decade ago.
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As customary, the 2016 DVCon/San Jose was held at the DoubleTree Hotel. The dates this year were February 29-March 3.

Attended by approximately 1,200 visitors (about 700 paying customers and 400+ on the free day) and 30 exhibitors, its program included 12 tutorials, 13 technical papers and 45 posters. Topics were on various aspects of design and design verification, with particular emphasis on hardware emulation, Universal Verification Methodology (UVM), portable stimulus, low-power design, and formal.

The event offered a keynote, two panels, one roundtable and three sponsored lunches by each of the three main EDA giants. A conversation between Jim Hogan and Ajoy Bose titled “Crossing the Chasm: From technology to Valuable Enterprise,” was hosted by the EDA Consortium and based on Dr. Bose’s career in building several businesses in the high-tech industry.

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