The Breker Trekker 
Tom Anderson, VP of Marketing
Tom Anderson is vice president of Marketing for Breker Verification Systems. He previously served as Product Management Group Director for Advanced Verification Solutions at Cadence, Technical Marketing Director in the Verification Group at Synopsys and Vice President of Applications Engineering at … More » A Guide to Composition for Testbench ElementsJuly 17th, 2014 by Tom Anderson, VP of Marketing
Over the lifetime of The Breker Trekker, we’ve published numerous posts about the inherent benefits of graph-based scenario models for verification. These models allow you to pull on a rope rather than push it. They allow you to begin with the end in mind, solving backwards to determine the necessary inputs. They support advanced verification planning and debug. They make verification modeling more pleasant. They enable both horizontal reuse over the course of a project and vertical reuse from IP block to subsystem to system. Today we’d like to dig into a particular aspect of vertical reuse that we have not addressed in detail before. One of the goals of verification standards has been to define testbench elements that are reusable. This goal was very much in mind when the Accellera working group standardized the Universal Verification Methodology (UVM). By establishing a standard architecture, nomenclature, and application programming interface (API), UVM components are highly reusable from project to project and even company to company. However, the UVM fails at other forms of reuse. Read the rest of A Guide to Composition for Testbench Elements Would You Rather Push on a Rope or Pull It?July 8th, 2014 by Tom Anderson, VP of Marketing
Last week we talked once again about our familiar mantra to “begin with the end in mind” when performing SoC verification. We described the enormous value that graph-based scenario models provide by enabling automatic test case generation from desired results. TrekSoC can walk the graph backwards, from result to inputs, and generate the C code necessary to exercise true user-level test cases across multiple threads and multiple heterogenous processors. It’s clear even to the biggest fans of the Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) that this standard breaks down at the full-chip level for an SoC containing one or more embedded processors. The UVM, for all its good points, does not encompass code executing on processors and does not provide any guidance on how to link such code with the testbench that connects the chip’s inputs and outputs. The value of scenario models for SoCs is clear. But what about large chips without embedded processors? Does Breker have a role to play there as well? Read the rest of Would You Rather Push on a Rope or Pull It? Beginning with the End in Mind: Graphs and FormalJune 30th, 2014 by Tom Anderson, VP of Marketing
I’ve written about formal analysis rather frequently in this blog, although I do not consider Breker’s products to be formal in nature. There are several reasons for this. After ten years working with formal tools, I remain personally interested in that market. I also see interesting parallels between the adoption of formal and graph-based technologies. Further, whenever we cover formal analysis we get a great response. Clearly our readers like the topic as well. I’m returning to formal this week because of a provocative comment made by one of our customers at DAC a few weeks ago. Wolfgang Roesner from IBM participated on the show floor in a Pavilion Panel called “The Asymptote of Verification.” Among several astute observations about the attributes of graph-based scenario models, he made a comparison with formal analysis that I found especially perceptive. Read the rest of Beginning with the End in Mind: Graphs and Formal Final DAC Roundup: Spotting Trends and Catching FrisbeesJune 23rd, 2014 by Tom Anderson, VP of Marketing
Over the last few weeks, we’ve provided a look back at DAC from Breker, Jonah McLeod of Kilopass, and verification consultant Lauro Rizzatti. Today we wind up the series with some great insights and memories from five more DAC exhibitors. For formal verification services provider Oski Technology, DAC confirmed what it’s experiencing: use of formal adoption is on the rise worldwide, notes Jin Zhang, its senior director of marketing. As is often the case, along with adoption comes the need for training and that’s certainly true for formal verification. Attendees and exhibitors alike stopped by the Oski booth to ask about advanced formal training. Yes, Oski offers several types of training customized to specific needs, and verified that DAC can be a great place to raise awareness and visibility. Read the rest of Final DAC Roundup: Spotting Trends and Catching Frisbees Guest Post: DAC From a Different PerspectiveJune 16th, 2014 by Tom Anderson, VP of Marketing
We hope you enjoyed last week’s guest post from Jonah McLeod of Kilopass with his experiences at this year’s Design Automation Conference (DAC) in San Francisco. We’ve offered several of our friends in the EDA industry to write in with their assessments of the show. Next up is Lauro Rizzatti, another industry veteran perhaps best-known as general manager of EVE-USA. These days he’s a verification consultant, and he shares his story of going to DAC as a conference attendee rather than as a vendor: This is the first DAC where I wasn’t responsible for an exhibitor booth and it was exhilarating. I was able to attend sessions, walk the exhibit floor and, generally, get a feel for what’s going on in our industry. I’m pleased to report the news is good. Very good, in fact. Read the rest of Guest Post: DAC From a Different Perspective Guest Post: How I Spent My Three Days at DACJune 10th, 2014 by Tom Anderson, VP of Marketing
Last week, we offered Breker’s perspective on the recently concluded Design Automation Conference (DAC) in San Francisco. After last year’s DAC in Austin, in addition to our own summary we published several guest posts from other vendors in which they shared their impressions of the show. These proved quite popular, and so again this year we’ll be publishing some guest posts with interesting thoughts on DAC and how it’s evolving to meet the needs of the semiconductor industry. Today we begin with Jonah McLeod, director of corporate communications at Kilopass: Three days of DAC as an attendee found me listening to presentations at the TSMC and SMIC booths from foundry partners. In between times, I listened to two pitches from Monte Carlo simulation vendors Solido Design Automation and CLK Design Automation. Both promised to achieve Spice-level accuracy within a couple of percentage points in a fraction of the time. I also checked out Verifyter AB, a company offering debug automation and analysis software. Read the rest of Guest Post: How I Spent My Three Days at DAC A Fond Farewell to DAC 51 in San FranciscoJune 5th, 2014 by Tom Anderson, VP of Marketing
The 51st Design Automation Conference (DAC) has passed into the history books with three days of exhibits and a wide range of enveloping technical sessions and tutorials. After returning home, I’m thinking back over the week fondly as I nurse feet that ache more than I thought possible. Before I get back into the usual work routine, I want to capture some of the impressions and thoughts running through my head. There is no doubt that big forces in the industry are aligning toward our view of SoC verification with graph-based scenario models. Many of the people who stopped by our “USS Ice Breker” booth completely understood that they risked hitting an iceberg with their minimal full-chip verification efforts. Some had heard about Breker from colleagues or had seen us listed in Gary Smith’s and John Cooley’s DAC “must see” lists. Others knew little about us but were attracted by our claim as “The SoC Verification Company.” All wanted to know how we can help them. DAC is Back! A Preview of the San Francisco ShowMay 28th, 2014 by Tom Anderson, VP of Marketing
DAC is back, Jack! The big show returns to San Francisco for two years before heading back to Austin. Last year was a special one for Breker, with our 10th anniversary as a company, the 50th year of DAC, and the first time for the show in Austin, our birthplace. But no location draws more visitors and more buzz than San Francisco. It’s a short train ride from traditional Silicon Valley and arguably part of an extended definition of Silicon Valley that includes a fair chunk of the Bay Area. This year’s show promises plenty of excitement, and we’d like to fill you in. Of course, we will be there as part of the always lively exhibit floor. Those of you who attended DAC in Austin will surely remember our naval-themed “USS Ice Breker” booth, which we loved so much we’re shipping it to San Francisco. No visit to the DAC exhibits would be complete without stopping by to see Breker in booth 2602 and taking a “cruise” with us. You can request a meeting at a specific time by visiting our DAC signup page. Read the rest of DAC is Back! A Preview of the San Francisco Show Guest Post: DAC, the Industry Marathon to Beat All Industry MarathonsMay 20th, 2014 by Tom Anderson, VP of Marketing
Many newcomers to Breker’s Web site comment that they are impressed by the quantity and quality of the material located or linked there. For a small company, Breker does publish a lot. Our site links to nearly 250 items from the last two-and-a-half years: conference papers, technical articles, blog posts, press releases, interviews, press coverage, and more. On average, something by or about Breker appears online twice a week, not counting social media alerts or the content hosted on our own site. Of course this takes a lot of effort by Breker employees, but this level of production would not be possible without the expertise of Nanette Collins, whose marketing and public relations agency has been instrumental in the success of many EDA companies. We thank her for her efforts and welcome her as a guest blogger today. Nanette shares her thoughts on the upcoming (June 2-4) Design Automation Conference (DAC) in San Francisco: Read the rest of Guest Post: DAC, the Industry Marathon to Beat All Industry Marathons To Standardize or Not to Standardize, That Is the QuestionMay 13th, 2014 by Tom Anderson, VP of Marketing
As regular readers know, Breker’s claim to fame is the automatic generation of multi-threaded, self-verifying test cases that run on multiple heterogeneous processors within an SoC. The source for the generation process is a graph-based scenario model that captures the design intent and verification space. We chose graphs as an enabling technology more than ten years ago for a number of reasons, some of which we’ll discuss in this post. The catalyst for this discussion is a new effort within the Accellera standards body to form the Portable Stimulus Specification Proposed Working Group (PWG). Basically, Accellera has formed a proposed working group to determine whether a technical working group should be established to start developing a specification for a standard. What does this have to do with graphs, and Breker? We’ll do our best to explain the history and current status. Read the rest of To Standardize or Not to Standardize, That Is the Question |
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