IEEE to promote industry adoption of global standards
Feedback from Electronic Design Automation (EDA) practitioners is the key to evolution of standards fostering interoperability and innovation as chip-design methodology grows more complex
IEEE is launching the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) Symposium on Electronic Design Automation (EDA) Interoperability.
The event - scheduled to take place 24th October 2013 in Silicon Valley - is intended to help members of the electronics/semiconductor design and verification community better understand the landscape of EDA and semiconductor intellectual property (IP) standards, as well as the role of these standards to address industry interoperability challenges.
"The EDA industry relies on globally relevant standards to foster quality and tool interoperability, and the symposium is a valuable way for the IEEE-SA to facilitate industry adoption and refinement of such standards," says Yatin Trivedi, a member of the executive committee for the IEEE-SA symposium and director of standards and interoperability programs, with Synopsys, Inc.
"This is a new event for the IEEE-SA that is necessary because EDA tools and chip-design methodology have grown substantially more complex. Our industry has reached an inflection point in which standards-centric interoperability is required across more dimensions than ever before. Practitioner experience and input are critically needed to shape the ongoing evolution of the standards."
The IEEE-SA symposium builds on the EDA Developers Forum, a long-running interoperability event that Synopsys has hosted 24 times since 1994. The EDA Developers Forum helped the EDA industry mature into a more standards-oriented environment. Interoperability standards have proliferated in EDA, with a diverse array of organizations contributing to such standards.
For example, IEEE standards related to EDA include IEEE 1666 "Standard for Standard SystemC Language Reference Manual" and IEEE 1800 "Standard for SystemVerilog - Unified Hardware Design, Specification, and Verification Language."
The new IEEE-SA symposium is intended to help electronics/semiconductor vendors, IP suppliers, developers, support staff, users and researchers better understand and apply the array of global standards for design data exchange formats, use models and methodologies, as well as tool development and customisation.
"As a long-time participant in the EDA Developers Forum, I've seen firsthand how market-driven standards have fuelled innovation and market growth in the EDA industry, consistently enabling advancements in our ability to define complex electronic solutions," says Dennis Brophy, a member of the executive committee for the IEEE-SA symposium and director of strategic business development at Mentor Graphics Corporation. "IEEE-SA is the right organisation to take this event to the next level to provide a broad, global and industry-wide context."
Konstantinos Karachalios, managing director of the IEEE-SA adds, "We are happy to support these EDA industry leaders by providing a forum for open collaboration, which is integral to the development of globally relevant standards that accelerate technology adoption and market growth. The EDA industry is a perfect example of this dynamic, and the new IEEE-SA symposium is a good way to fire that engine of innovation. In this way, the standards environment in the EDA industry is emblematic of the market-driven paradigm for global, open standards that is encapsulated in the "˜OpenStand' principles (http://open-stand.org)."
The IEEE Standards Association develops consensus standards through an open process that engages industry and brings together a broad stakeholder community. IEEE standards set specifications and best practices based on current scientific and technological knowledge.
