A few weeks ago I wrote about how I’m using lean startup to launch a new EDA tool. Last week, I finally got everything in place. It’s called FunCov and it’s live on the new AgileSoC.com tool portal. Continue reading →

The SVUnit User Guide is a few weeks old. Lots of views so far, which is a good sign, but not much feedback yet so I’ve added a form so people can let me know what they think. If you’re using SVUnit, please take the time to post feedback. The form is at the bottom of the User Guide page. It’s just 3 questions and an optional text box to paste in any additional praise/rant.

Thanks!

-neil

Here’s some information about a second agile hardware session at DAC in San Francisco. On June 8th at 5pm, you’ll find me and Harry Foster of Mentor Graphics in the Verification Academy booth talking about An Agile Evolution in SoC Verification. Here’s the session description from the Verification Academy events page… Continue reading →

Good news and better news…

The good news is that I’ll be part of an agile hardware panel discussion at DAC this year in San Francisco. The discussion happens at 10:30am on June 9th at the Moscone Center and it’s happening thanks to Randy Smith and folks at Sonics. For more info, check out the conference website.

The better news is that this is the first of two (repeat: two) exciting chances at DAC to build the agile hardware community (I’ll point you to the other in part two as the details are finalized). Needless to say, two chances to reach out at a conference like DAC is a great opportunity so if you’re a fan of agile hardware, a practitioner, someone who wants to know more or somebody who wants to get out and publicly disagree with the whole idea, I hope to see you there!

-neil

On Friday I decided I could use a break from the blog so I’m going to step away for a bit. Not exactly sure for how long, but it might be a while. Or maybe not. We’ll see. Meanwhile, you’ll still be able to find me at neil.johnson@agilesoc.com for questions, comment and discussion re: agile hardware. Later.

-neil

Heads-up that I just posted my end-of-conference summary of the Agile2014 conference in Orlando. In short, it was a great conference with some very promising signs for agile hardware. You can read my full report here.

-neil

I’ve often heard the statement that hardware developers follow a more disciplined development process than software developers. What I haven’t heard much about is what it means to be disciplined and/or why that’s the case. So let’s open that discussion in hopes it takes us somewhere useful.

• How would you characterize a disciplined development process?
• What makes one team more disciplined than another?
• What’s the best example you’ve witnessed/heard of a team acting following disciplined development process?
• Why is it important to have a disciplined development process?
• Who follows a more disciplined approach to development: hardware or software? Why is that the case?

Those questions are for you so feel free to address any/all of them. No right or wrong answers to these questions, just opinions. Please share yours :).

-neil

In the DVCon abstract I submitted last month, I mentioned a new verification component called the uvm_boat_anchor. The uvm_boat_anchor is top-secret development so not much was known at the time about this new component, even by me. For the abstract, all I could say was:

The paper concludes by introducing a new UVM component, the uvm_boat_anchor, that further demonstrates the perils of continuing to ignore the value of this basic yet entirely necessary technique.

It’s been a couple weeks since and while the team working on the uvm_boat_anchor is still operating in stealth mode, I’m happy to announce that I can finally give people a sneak peek. Continue reading →

I don’t normally need much motivation to try something new on AgileSoC.com. So at the first sign people were interested in the idea of adding a forum to help facilitate discussion between hardware and software developers, I went ahead with it. As of this morning, you can now post topics to AgileSoC forums.

 

To start, we’ve have 3 areas for people to contribute. First is the general category. Got a question or comment for other AgileSoC.com followers? That’s where you’ll want to post it.

Next, we’ve got the Hardware Developer Seeking Agile Software Guidance and Mentoring. In case the title isn’t obvious enough, here’s what that’s all about…

 

And then the big one, Agile Software Developers With the Time And Patience to Help Out, where I sincerely hope we find some agile software folks courageous enough and patient enough to lend a hand to a hardware developer in need of a little inspiration.

 

There they are… the new AgileSoC forums. Let the discussion begin!

-neil

This may be a good idea… it also may be a terrible idea. Either way it’s worth a shot. You’ve heard of take your kid to work? Well, this is kind of like that except the kid is a hardware developer. Continue reading →