Aug
Shame on you big EDA companies!
An important piece of standards work is being undertaken within Accellera. It is the creation of a standard API related to coverage data and is being conducted under the UCIS committee. 18 months ago, a request for donations was made. All of the major EDA companies declined to accept the possibility. They stated at that time that there was no user demand for such a thing. The group continued their efforts driven by the very companies that the EDA companies said did not exist. They took the next year to produce a requirements document saying exactly what they wanted in such an API. That was in January of this year.
Since then, the EDA companies - specifically Mentor and Synopsys are falling over each other to make a donation and trying to exclude the other. In fact more time is being spent on the donation process and procedures for deciding on donations than any actual technical progress. One of the EDA companies today said that another was participating in stalling practices. Another EDA company says that they have technology to donate but it will take 2 months to produce documentation. It is not clear if that is legal clearance or to actually write the documentation.
Standards has become so political that it is not surprising that most user companies get disheartened and withdraw from helping to craft the standards.
Shame on you big EDA companies!
I agree that this is an important standard that will allow the use coverage and requirements tracking tools from one vondor with a simulator from another vendor.
At DAC this year, I caught wind that S had blocked M from donating their UCDB. Then I saw that Mentor had donated their UCDB, so I thought the fight was over and that this would be much smoother that the OVM/VMM battle.
I guess I was wrong.
August 28th, 2008 at 2:31 pm