The Pace Quickens, the Scope Widens

by Gabe Moretti

The frequency of publication of the DACeZine is increasing to twice a month beginning with this issue.  We do so, beginning in March every year, to accommodate the increase in the number of articles needed to cover all of the relevant news surrounding the conference.

In this issue, the article by Geoffrey James continues our coverage of the discourse surrounding analog design tools and methods.  Most observers of the EDA industry have identified this market segment as being ready for significant growth and increased competition, after years in which Cadence's Virtuoso has been the functionality and compatibility  benchmark for every new analog design product.  Just last week, Magma introduced the Titan platform, aimed at supporting analog and mixed/signal designs, and more products are rumored to be on the verge of public announcement, making the upcoming DAC conference the proper venue for attendees interested in new opportunities in analog, mixed-signal, and RF design solutions.

What is becoming a regular column for the DACeZine, the Round Table moderated by Ed Sperling, took place during DVCon.  Participants—including yours truly—addressed the issue of the changing communication ecosystems in EDA.  We discussed the respective roles of blogs, generic publications, as well as publications dedicated to covering only one aspect of the design flow or one specific application area.  Of course, the discourse is only the beginning—one hour or so is not enough—and more contributions are welcome.  Let me hear from you by your writing to me.  But what seems to me important to point out here is that this publication, DACeZine, is at the forefront of the change in communication patterns.  One of DACeZine’s most unique characteristics is that it offers to both exhibitors and attendees of DAC the best opportunity available anywhere to communicate, discuss, and learn.  People that read it are, by definition, either past conferences' attendees, or individuals interested in both EDA and DAC as its premier annual event.

I am very happy to welcome the Viewpoint by Keith Imai, chairman of GSC, the Global Conference of the Semiconductor Test Consortium.  GSC and DAC, as you can read in an article in this issue, have formed a conference alliance partnership that underscores the importance of test planning during design as well as the contributions of test strategies to the success of design teams.  As the leading EDA conference, DAC is building strong relationships with other segments of the electronics industry because it realizes the importance of thinking globally, from architectural design to final test, in facilitating the financial success of the companies and professionals that make up our constituency.

I welcome suggestions, differing opinions, and even (gentle!) criticism. Let me hear from you by writing to me: address your content to gabe@gabeoneda.com.

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The DACeZine also has a Letters to the Editor section to allow for shorter contributions to the contents and directions of the publication. When necessary, answers to the letters will come from the appropriate member of the team (including our readers), since I do not (yet) hold the total knowledge of the industry within me. I encourage all of you to write, either a viewpoint or a letter, and state your opinions on matters that impact our industry, the contents of this publication, or, for that matter, the publication itself. Send your letters to: dacezine@dac.com.

I hope you enjoy this DACeZine issue and pass it along to your friends and colleagues: I am sure they will want to subscribe as well. They can do so by visiting the www.dac.com web page.

Automatic Analog Design

Is it really a black art or just a red herring?

by Geoffrey James

For years, the EDA industry has been calling analog IC design a black art—tool makers wag their heads sadly at the difficulties of automating it.  Many industry experts still espouse that view, but there are a growing number of voices saying that the challenge has been overrated and that the recalcitrance of the analog designer community might be as much of a problem as the inherent complexity of analog design itself.  Is analog design truly a black art?  And, if not, why do so many think it is?  And when will the EDA industry see the breakthroughs that will automate analog IC design, thus transforming it from an art into a science?

State of the Black Art
Nobody seriously questions that designing analog IC circuitry (including mixed-signal) is more difficult than designing comparable digital IC circuitry.  Unlike digital designers, analog circuit designers must make 'architectural' decisions that balance a complicated set of concerns, according to Eric Filseth, CEO of Ciranova, an EDA startup that's building tools for analog designers working on custom chips.  As such, analog design has a lot of the same characteristics of computer architecture design, with many trade-offs and up-front decision-making.  "[It's] not very automated, requires experienced and insightful designers," Filseth explains.

Analog IC design also requires a deep understanding of physics and how components react to each other in the silicon environment.  As a consequence, "the study of analog design is very hard…much harder than digital design," says Mike Demler, product marketing manager for Synopsys's analog simulation tool. Analog design requires expert knowledge of the fundamental principles of electronics, circuit theory, semiconductor physics, signal processing theory, advanced mathematics and so forth.  As a result, "engineers who choose to pursue analog design as a career must study (and master) a large body of science," says Demler, "Those who can do that and then apply their knowledge creatively are scarce."

To make matters worse, analog design gets more difficult as the industry moves to ever-smaller nodes.  "The physical effects of nanometer processes have introduced variability, the need to manage leakage and power while maintaining performance with lower supply voltages, and the requirement for analysis of numerous post-layout effects," says Demler.  Furthermore, the complexity of design rules at 65 and 45nm and below makes it hard for human engineers to optimize an analog design (especially the physical layout) in an acceptable timeframe, according to Filseth.

Despite the complexity, though, it's probably an overstatement to call analog IC design a black art.  "There are definitely parts of the custom analog design process that are sufficiently rote to be computerized," claims Steve Lewis, a director of product marketing at Cadence. "The trick is to concentrate on removing some of the drudgery from the process," he says.  EDA pundit Gary Smith of Gary Smith EDA believes that at least some of the difficulties associated with automating analog design lie in a general unwillingness, among analog designers, to cooperate with EDA tool builders. "Analog engineers have been by far the highest paid of the two and analog IC vendors also have far better margins than the digital vendors," he says, "Keeping the perception of analog design as a black art has been in their best interests."

Analog Wagging the Digital Dog
Part of the problem is that, when it comes to engineers, "automation" is a loaded term.  While "automation" can be taken to mean "removing the drudgery," there's a dark side, too.  Analog designers can't have helped but notice that there have been entire classes of professionals in the high tech world who have found themselves "automated" out of a high-paying job.

A similar "de-skilling" process took place among digital IC designers, according to Chris Collins, director of analog technology infrastructure at Texas Instruments.  "The best thing to ever happen to digital was when a voltage was quantized into a zero and a one," he explained, "Many great EDA tools were then developed around that sort of structure and it certainly made digital design into a commoditized trade...literally anyone could do it."  As a result, digital IC designers now command significantly lower salaries than their analog brethren.

Unfortunately, "automating" something as complicated as analog design is only possible with the direct cooperation of the folk being "automated."  And that's created a conflict of interest for EDA firms who haven't been willing to irritate the analog designers, lest they stop buying their tools. "If you annoy your constituency, they'll just say 'we won't do it," says Cadence's Lewis, "Most companies have a shortage of analog master designers and they're like the tip of the tail that wags the dog."

However, that dysfunctional dynamic is beginning to change as the result of two major trends, according to Gary Smith.  The first trend is the aging of the workforce. "The good news is the old farts are retiring and the new analog guys are willing to use tools," he says.  The second trend is the injection of foreign design firms into the mix. "Asia has come up as a major analog area and in Asia there is no separate analog/digital engineer categories; they are all just IC designers," says Smith.  And that makes them more willing to cooperate when it comes to co-developing tools that might add more automation into the analog design process.

This is not to say that there's will be a change overnight. "It is in my opinion that analog design is still a guild art in many ways and the best analog designers are Master Craftsmen in their trade," says Collins, who believes that it may be a decade, or more, before the promise of analog automation can truly reach fruition.  "The EDA industry is still very much today where it was in the late 80's when it comes to analog software innovation," he explains, "By and large, the analog EDA industry is still the 'netlist and simulate' EDA industry (which) continues to add to the mystique and black art persona of analog design."

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Where Did You Hear That?

The ongoing breakdown in the advertising model leaves engineers and executives on their own for information gathering; expect to put in more hours sifting through data.

DACeZine sat down to discuss the future of information gathering with Limor Fix, principal engineer and associate lab director at Intel Research Pittsburgh and general chair, 45th DAC; J.L. Gray, consultant at Verilab who runs the Cool Verification Blog; David Maliniak, EDA editor at Electronic Design; and Gabe Moretti, managing editor of Gabe on EDA. What follows are excerpts of that conversation.

By Ed Sperling

Q: With the traditional business media collapsing around us, where will engineers and executives go to get their information?
Maliniak: When I first started, there wasn’t any other way for engineers to get this kind of information. There was no Internet, no cell phone—none of this infrastructure existed. We’ve been marginalized by the Internet. The question we’re grappling with is how to make us relevant in new ways. The tech industry sees us increasingly as a middleman they would like to bypass.
Moretti: You also have to bring in the business dynamics. When it was paper-based—and even through the transition from paper to electronic—papers were family-owned. Now they’re owned by international conglomerates. That implies a tremendous push toward profit, and the easiest way to generate profit in the short term is to cut costs. Sometimes they’re shrinking coverage to what is acceptable, not what is preferable while, at the same time trying to deliver a good product at a lower cost. They’re looking for the pain point, and then they’ll back off. But at the same time, advertising is shrinking because companies are also experimenting with new channels.

Q: So where do engineers go, once the dust settles?
Fix: First of all, we want something else. We are now reading the news on the Internet. We are interacting with people on Facebook. I want it short, I want it on my Blackberry, I want it real-time, and I want to hear conflicting opinions from my social network. I don’t want to read an article that is two pages long that is last month’s news. The players that will survive will be the ones to give the new type of information.
Maliniak: So for you, it’s about how the information is delivered?
Fix: The content is also different. It’s not just the format.
Gray: I go through the trade Web sites and publications. The material there is almost irrelevant to me. Sometimes there are articles that are interesting if I can find them, but I don’t browse through the sites all the time so I usually can’t find them. I look for other people I know that have blogs.

Q: Do you trust blogs more than professionally written stories?
Gray: If I’m writing a blog about back-end tools, you wouldn’t trust me because I don’t know anything about them. If I’m writing about verification, then people do trust me because they know that I’m writing about something I’m doing at the time. People know that’s my background. Journalists are writing about something they don’t really understand.
Fix: There are a few trusted names. I’m so busy with my work, I can’t tell you how many different articles I read, but there are a few names I know and trust. But when I go to a conference, I hear someone on a panel. When I go out into the corridor, I hear a little bit more feedback. If I hear it once and I hear it three more times, I trust it. That’s the way we think now. I would like to have an article where enough people comment.

Q: So what you’re looking for is triangulation of information?
Fix: Correct.

Q: Is that something the press has done traditionally?
Moretti: The press has always had letters to the editor, which were the only way to communicate or establish a different viewpoint. [CMP’s] DesignLine family of Web sites is trying very hard to use the Forum section. But engineers are really busy, and they’re afraid of communicating, probably because they feel their managers might get upset if they say something that is proprietary, or they might be misunderstood. They’re more absorbing than giving.
Maliniak: We’ve had many attempts to stimulate back-and-forth discussion, and it rarely goes anywhere. Some sites work, some don’t.

Q: Three years from now, where will you go for information and what will you expect to get?
Gray: I would love to have a way to pull down the topics I want and deliver them to my readers.

Q: Who’s going to be writing those articles?
Gray: One place would be the trade press. A second would be bloggers. I’ve been trying to convince people to write about what they know. Eventually you get a collection of people who know things, and you know they know, and that’s what you want. In verification, one forum that has worked is Janick Bergeron’s Verification Guild. You know that if you go there, he’ll answer your question and he 'll be right.
Maliniak: People who run blogs are not always without agenda. Janick is a straight shooter, but he does work for a commercial entity.
Gray: He’ll take a position, but he’ll be cordial about other positions.

Q: But isn’t a broad-based publication comparable to a supermarket, where you no longer have to go cut deals with each fruit and vegetable vendor? Given what you’re talking about, you will have to work much harder to get your information, right?
Fix: The next wave will be to look at something on the Web that brings you relevant information. Instead of me sitting for three hours looking through everything, within 15 minutes this software will give me a quick look on a certain topic. I’m willing to pay a monthly fee for aggregation.
Gray: How can you charge for something that’s so easy to build? I can spend five minutes on Yahoo Pipes and create an aggregator if I know where all the resources are coming from. That doesn’t cost anything.

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