@head: Max's Chips and Dips: Cool "Stuff" from Kilopass and Cadence
@deck: I'm always happy when I'm learning something new, so I'm currently bouncing off the walls with excitement because there's so much cool "stuff" happening at the moment!
Well, here we are again, and – although it was only two weeks ago as I pen these words – DAC 2006 is now something of a distant memory that has already started to fade away in the mists of time. Ah, how quickly we forget. . .
Fortunately, I always travel around with a good supply of notebooks taking reams of notes relaying to the companies I meet and the products I see. Sadly, things can become somewhat confused, because whenever I have a moment to myself you'll find me jotting ideas down as random thoughts ricochet around my head (sometimes the "view" from inside my noggin is like being in the middle of a fireworks display). The end result is a complete mish-mash of "stuff" written in such a cryptic style that it would make even a doctor's handwriting look meaningful.
The Return of the Beast
The problem is that there are just so many cool things happening at the moment. For example, do you recall the idea I had a few months ago for a mixed technology computer I called the "Heath Robinson Rube Goldberg Computer"? The idea is to build a machine as a collection of cabinets, where each cabinet is implemented using a different technology, including relays, vacuum tubes, transistors, jelly-bean ICs, magnetic logic (and core store), pneumatic logic, fluidic logic – and then we move onto the more esoteric technologies . . .
You can read more about this in a paper "wot I wrote" titled <a href=" target="_new">The HRRG Computer</a>. The point is that this was originally going to be a long-term, far-future, back-burner type project, but it's suddenly leapt to the foreground, because … wait for it, wait for it … we've actually started work on what we now affectionately refer to as "The Beast".
I don’t want to give too much away at the moment. Suffice it to say that we have an idea that is so cunning "we could pin a tail on it and call it a weasel" (this will make sense to fans of the British TV comedy "Black Adder"). If things work the way we plan, anyone will be able to construct a single cabinet representing a portion of the computer (for example, a cabinet could contain just a few 8-bit words of memory, if one wished) in any technology under the sun … and then run this cabinet in conjunction with either (a) an emulation of the rest of the system running on a PC, (b) other cabinets in the same room, (c) other cabinets located around the world (communicating via the Internet), or (d) an mixture of all of these techniques (again, the "guts" of each cabinet could be implemented in any technology one wished).
Hopefully we'll have the infrastructure for all of this up and running in the not-so-distant future. And when we do, you'll be among the first to know . . . watch this space . . .
Non-Volatile Memory IP from Kilopass
Oh well, back to the real (work) world. I saw so many cool things at DAC 2006 – far too many to go into here. However, one company that "tickled my fancy" was Kilopass ( with their embedded non-volatile memory IP. The cool thing about this is that it's implemented in a standard CMOS process, so you can embed it alongside your logic in any digital design.
Truth to tell, when I first stat down with the guys at Kilopass, I wasn't too sure what all the excitement was about. Why would I actually want to include small amounts (from a few bits to a few thousand words) of one-time programmable memory on my ASIC/ASSP/SoC design, I asked?
So they presented me with one simple example, and I thought: "Wow, that's pretty cunning!" Here's the story. HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) is an uncompressed, all-digital audio/video interface. This is hot! In the not-so-distant future, HDMI will be used to connect any audio/video source (set-top box, DVD player, A/V receiver, etc.) to any audio/video destination, such as a digital television (DTV).
The problem is that the specification calls for each HDMI chip in each HDMI-enabled device to have its own unique security ID. In turn, this means that you either have to fabricate these chips as one-offs (which isn’t going to happen) or . . . you guessed it . . . you embed a small amount of one-time programmable non-volatile memory in the chip and then program a unique ID into each chip.
And this is just one application. The folks at Kilopass can waffle on for hours about this stuff (give them a call and you'll see what I mean). As one last point, the memory footprint of this memory is so small that some folks embed several copies with the ability to select between them. The idea here is that although each copy is one-time programmable, you can effectively "reprogram" the device by programming and selecting another block of memory.
Cadence Introduce"Universal Verification Components"
Just a few days ago as I pen these words, Cadence ( announced the introduction of something they call "Universal Verification Components (UVCs)."
Wow! This sounds good. So just what are these little rascals? Well, lets say you are designing an ASIC/ASSP/SoC and you are using a protocol like PCI Express, Ethernet, USB, or ARM's AMBA AHB and AXI standards. These are complicated beasts, so how are you going to test them and verify your system (a) does what it's supposed to and (b) doesn’t do what it's not supposed to?
Enter UVCs, which are claimed to be the industry's only Verification IP (VIP) that supports <i>all</i> of the standard languages backed by the IEEE, including SystemVerilog and "e" for test benches, and SystemC, VHDL, and SystemVerilog for design.
A key component of each of these little rapscallions is a unique executable verification plan (vPlan) that drives management of the verification process and automatically calibrates, measures, and reports on protocol compliance.
This is all part of Cadence's Incisive verification platform and their "Plan-to-Closure" methodology, both of which embrace so many concepts and tools and methodologies that it makes your head spin, so I'll leave it to Cadence to explain it all to you (there's a wealth of information on their website).
Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow!
Well, parting is a happy occasion in this case, because I can hear the plans for our Heath Robinson Rube Goldberg Mixed-Technology "Beast" calling me . . . "Max, Max, where are you?" To which the only answer I can give is: "Fear not my little ones, I'm racing to your side." In fact, a host of new ideas have popped into my mind as I've been writing this column, and I'm eager to write them down before they leak out of my ears and are lost to the world forever. And so, until next time, I bid you adieu. Have a good one!