DAC Wrap-up

Last week the 48th Design Automation Conference (DAC) was held in San Diego. This marks the 11th conference (I think) that I've been to and this year left few surprises. Cloud computing, 3-D extraction and discussions on lowering the cost appeared to generate the most buzz.  For me it was moderating an interesting PDK panel, and as always meeting up with old colleagues and friends.  For the first time I'm starting to see my peers gracefully aging; in fact I made a few comments to old friends and it seems as though I wasn't alone in my observations. Whether it was the growing waistline, receding/graying/balding hairlines, it seems as though we all have aged a bit over the past year.

For my part it was a little different this year. In past years DAC week was one of curiosity and interest in the new  Esemiconductor technology, meetings with vendors on their new promises and vapor-ware solutions, and hope that this coming year would bring some new "stuff" to the table. While all of that was still true this year I also was listening. I spent a fair amount of time in the IC Manage booth listening to colleagues challenges with respect to IP management. One colleague came in lamenting that senior management was pushing IP re-use initiatives (presumably the VP was incentivized) without bothering to define the process by which that should happen. Another colleagues was trying to deal with a "multiple (Data Management) DM stategy". It seems as if using subversion (svn)  wasn't cutting it so some teams were shifting to git, while the hardware guys weren't using anything outside of VersionSync. Lastly I heard colleagues who simply were so massive they had no idea what IP they had and had actually repurchased the same IP twice (fortunately the honest vendor clued them into that small fact before the PO went in).

All of this rang true to me, having seen first hand the pitfalls of not having a solid IP strategy in place only makes the job of the designing chips that much more difficult.  IP Strategies ultimately come down to having a solid Data Management (DM) strategy.  Data management is the process of managing the data through the lifecycle of the product.  In all cases it means having a game-plan of understanding 1) What data do we need to do design? 2) How are we going to organize the data? 3) What data are we going to keep?  Fortunately for most teams the key to unraveling this is to have a solid design process in place.  If you have this then you probably can answer those questions, and then the difficult part becomes how well do you play with others.  In other words if I have to use someone else's IP do we have a mechanism which can bridge my data management strategy with thier strategy as simplistically as possible with (hopefully) no loss of information.   It's at that point that I usually get called in.

Having seen many companies struggle with this intersection of IP/Data management and design engineering I have an interesting perspective.  You need to design a flexible and scalable system which evolves with you over time.  8 years ago nobody would have thought that Open Access (OA) would have been as prevalent as it is.  And who knows where High Level Synthesis is going to take us.  Knowing where that data is used, how to organize this information, and what do we keep as a result is key.

And it's taking off. The business logistics side of things and health insurance.

What a hectic period. In getting this thing started the massive amount of business logistics which have been out into place is pretty daunting. We've learned about structuring the business in terms of a LLC vs an S-Corp, how tax deductions happen, how I get paid , and how health insurance works. The last was a nice surprise. 

I've been hearing for a while now that the cost of health insurance was going to be a big hit to the pocketbook, and I had a pleasant surprise on Friday. My financial planner (oh yeah you need one of those..) and I were working out the health insurance numbers for our family (2 adults, 1 child). A bit of background we are relatively healthy family and don't have any "pre-existing conditions", smoke, drink or any other issues. We may be in the minority but that's the lucky hand we were dealt. That said I was still freaking out about the horror stories I've been told. To keep the costs low we established an $5000 HSA account and that is our deductible. Again we are fairly healthy so doctor visits are pretty uncommon and while $5k is large it's not that significant if a major surgery is required. All said and done my monthly medical insurance costs are actually on-par with my former employer sponsored plan or $400 per month. I still think it's pretty costly but not the crazy numbers (> $1k/mo) I was being told. That said a colleague of mine in a different state is paying the enormous price. It's where you live I guess.. 

So whats the point of this? A long time ago I was in the military and I remember the career military folks saying how difficult it would be outside of the Navy. They would claim that life was so un-predictable and that job security was non-existent. It has been tough but suffice to say that for me and a certain portion of the ex-military, life outside of the service can happen and you can be successful. I think the same is true for entrepreneurship, it is tough but you can make it. I make no illusions of the future, I'm scared to death of failure and what if anything the future has in store for me. But it is through my success or failure which determine this; I can't control it but I can try my best to manage it.

The road to DAC - Challenges with IP

So as we head into the final week before DAC the mad scramble for EDA vendors is underway. Some of them are starting to leak out new products and features.  iPad 2 giveaways are in full promotion mode.  Gary has released his list..

As I mentioned earlier I am going to DAC as well.  I'm going as a consultant and I'll be talking to as many people as I can about Semiconductor IP (#SemIP).  I'm looking for inputs on the challenges with integrating IP between groups and companies.  I'll be talking about the landscape of IC Design from two perspectives; the IP Provider and the IP Integrator.

The IP Provider (Provider) has the role of providing core analog IP "Functions".  This include the traditional analog semiconductor shops.  This discipline is analog focused and it's verification environment sits squarely with transistor level simulations (aka spectre/spice).

The role of IP Integrator (Integrator) has the job of integrating the IP from one or many IP Providers.  This is your large scale design integration houses.  This discipline is digital focused and it's verification environment is gate level functional simulations (aka verilog).

I see lots of challenges in this space.  From simple non-functional IP verification checking to data / change-management issues, challenges abound.  As an Integrator do you find yourself wishing that you didn't have to spend hours diff-ing IP versions to find the delta?  As a Provider what are you doing to verify the liberty model is in sync with the cadence database?  Did you update the pin for that PHY in all views & who checks that stuff anyway? Does this sound familiar??

If this sounds familiar - look me up.  We need to talk!!

Steven Klass
Email: s_k_l_a_s_s_@7_s_t_a_l_k_s_dot_com
Call or Text:  480.225.1112
Twitter: @rh0dium

..Go!

Quick Post..

And here we go.  Today I start out in my new role as a founder, owner and consultant.  Many people want to know what I'm working on.  In my email I simply stated that "now that I have my first contract.."  and left it at that.  To everyone who is watching I am not going to go into the full details of it but it will become very clear over the next few months here on this blog.  I can say it will deal with semiconductor IP and the challenges of handling massive amounts of data in order to effectively and efficiently design SSoCs (Smart or System SoCs).

Hang in there it's going to be a very fun and exciting ride!!

Ready.. ..Set.. ..Almost.. ..Almost...

In less than one week I'm walking away from a paying job for starting my own consulting company.  I've been planning this for awhile and as we get closer to "the day" I can't help but feel terribly restless and emotionally on pins and needles.

There is so much to do yet - I feel as though it's coming all so fast.  It's like a freight train in the night.  You hear it in the distance and before you know it I will have been doing this for awhile.  I have almost everything done and ready (I'm meeting with the financial planners later today) and I still need to get business cards ordered.  It looks like I'll be heading to DAC so I need to book my ticket and get that secured away.

So as I we begin this journey I find myself saying "Take a breath and relax; you can handle this".  Thank god for my family.

The next chapter.

I'm cleaning out my office in preparation for the next chapter of my life.  This process involves cleaning and reorganizing and putting new structure in place for an old structure.  It involves pruning those items which have fallen to the wayside and emphasizing those which will propel me forward.  Order from chaos.

Part of this involves reviewing my library of books and pruning the "must keep" list down.  As much as I would have loved to keep all my books I've ever read, I understand I do not have infinite space and frankly some of them stink.   My library is primarily technically focused and while I enjoy fiction (B. Thor, V. Flynn, D. Silva, etc) most of those have transitioned over to the kindle/ipad.

My library is a catalog of my life.  Pruning it is hard and getting harder.  Some books have very little tangible value and most of them have such a high level of emotional value that I simply can't part with them.   Working through them is a story of my life and it can tell a chronological story of my technical capabilities and capacity.

The first technical book I actually wanted and purchased was the TRS-80 Color Computer Programs book by Tom Rugg.  I think I was seven years old at the time and I learned software programming by working through the exercises the book presented. I still have this (not this one mine is significantly more tattered and dog-earred) and I reflected on this last night.

Over the years I continued my technical quest focusing in on Math and Science.  In School some of the most important books I've kept are the Math books which have always been prominent on my shelves.  From Algebra to Calculus, and ending up at Div, Grad, Curl and all of that I've enjoyed math and science.

In college I focused in on semiconductors and then applied that knowledge to my career doing what?  Design Automation.  What's that?  Software engineering with an emphasis on the Semiconductor IC design process.  In short creating the tools and providing the technologies necessary to enable IC design engineers to design IC's.  In short make magic!

I've been very successful architecting, designing, and leading international design automation teams for the past 15 years.  I never had to worry about much, income or job security.  And I believe it comes from a deep seeded passion to do the very best and work your ass off to meet your goals.  I've been very blessed to have some unbelievably talented people working for me and have had some incredible managers and leaders who believed in me and what we could do.  Often times this meant going out on a limb and trusting me. 

In the last year I've been working on some new projects which scale well outside of the domain of IC Design Engineering.  The book I've finished working through is Multidimensional Analytics and Metric Data Structures by Hanan Samet.  While it's a heavy topic and loaded with difficult concepts this is where people and companies need get to in order to achieve a highly efficient supply chain.  The topic deals with pulling various disassociated data sets and drawing meaning from it.  Fascinating topic which I am having a blast with putting to work the principles it outlines.

So what the point of this?  As I was cleaning and reflecting on the books which have helped shape who I am I came to realize this.  You can run from truth about who you are, or you can embrace it and succeed.  I am a technologist passionate about building scalable software solutions.  Data is my friend and software development is the tools I use to manipulate that data.  It's my passion and I look forward to the next chapter.  The time to start is now.

7Stalks Consulting LLC - Pulling the trigger.

So I've went off and did it.  I finally pulled my big-boy pants on and started down the road of entrepreneurship.  I don't want to give too much away but here's a quick pitch on what I've done and what we can do.

Carly Fiorina summarized in one sentence our companies mission.

“The goal is to transform data into information, and information into insight”  

Think about this for a minute.  When I started down this road I wanted to define a company which effectively is focused in on multi-dimensional analytics.  I like pulling very disjoined data from multiple sources in order to draw meaning from it.  This has provided a tremendous value to customers and is an incredibly satisfying personally.  So what does this mean?

Say I have a tool which monitors license utilization.  This tool by itself is very valuable - I can track who is using licenses, when the license was taken, and the rate at which licenses are being consumed.  Pretty valuable eh?  What would happen if I could take that data and combine that with data on the individuals.  For example now I know where they physically located, perhaps what department or division they are part of and who their colleagues are. Overlaying these you can break down license utilization by department or location.   We are in the business of transforming data into information and information into insight.

So the journey begins!