Existentialism at my local
About 30 years ago (!!!!) I worked for Burroughs in Scotland. (Some of you may remember it…….designed and built computers. After merging with Sperry, it became Unisys). Here I was introduced to the grand institution of the local: i.e., the pub just up the way. Our works local was the Castlecary Inn, up the road from our location in Cumbernauld. Here I was introduced to a variety of ale……….mass-produced, cask-conditioned, real (this was during the heyday of CAMRA: CAMpaign for Real Ale) and the best of pub lunches: pie beans and chips, sausage egg and chips, chips beans and chips, chips chips and chips, etc.
Working in Santa Clara, I have begun to think of the Santa Clara Convention Centre, which is about a mile or so from Tensilica, as in some ways fulfilling the functions of a local, at least when there is a relevant conference going on there. They often have receptions at such conferences, usually on an exhibit floor, and there may well be some good food and beer on offer at these receptions. These receptions also meet some of the other criteria for a good pub: a chance to meet old friends and colleagues, to make new friends and colleagues, to get new gossip and possibly information, to swap stories, etc. It may lack the more intimate surroundings of a good pub, but still offer a fun experience.
Last week (March 31-April 3) there were two interesting and overlapping conferences at the Santa Clara Convention Centre: SNUG (the Synopsys User Group) and the MultiCore Expo. Both had a lot of interesting content and quite reasonable attendance. (Both also had good receptions!) But one interesting thing I noticed relates to ESL.
For many years, ESL has been talked about a bit like the Once and Future King: always on the horizon, never quite there, always promising, never being used. Of course, as I have commented on before, this may be partly due to your definition of ESL, and they do vary widely.
What I noticed in one session in SNUG, where Filip Thoen of Synopsys talked about a virtual platform case study, and in many sessions at the Multicore Expo, including the panel I was on talking about virtual platforms, was that the Existential question about ESL seems to have gone away…..at least, if your definition includes the use of system models and what are called ‘virtual platform’ models for architects and software developers. Richard Goering, who chaired the Multicore Expo panel on virtual platforms, asked the audience how many had or were using these kinds of models. I noticed about 15 hands go up. Although Richard in his article on SCDSource (http://www.scdsource.com/article.php?id=164) called that “only a handful”, from my perspective, that is a much bigger handful than it would have been a year ago, and I expect in another year that it will be two or more handfuls in such a venue.
In other words, I think we can stop debating the Existential questions about ESL: it exists, it is being used, and the real debate should be about the particular methods, tools, models and approaches that are most useful.
Funny what you can find out down at your local……………..