Standards, Interoperability, and Innovation in a Disaggregated IC Industry

h THE IC INDUSTRY today is disaggregated into integrated device manufacturers (IDMs), foundries, fables companies, and systems solution entities. Yet system complexity continues to grow relentlessly as we move to more advanced technology nodes and explore new design paradigms such as 3D integration. In order to be able to produce working designs in a predictable amount of time, we need to standardize the mechanism by which design and test data are generated, exchanged, translated, and ultimately analyzed by humans and computers. The electronic design automation (EDA) community is served by many standards bodies such as IEEE, Accellera, OSCI, Si2, and CMC, all of which focus on different aspects of design and test. Standards also encourage research breakthroughs in academia by providing the means for evaluating new ideas and comparing various emerging EDA solutions with each other. This fascinating issue introduces D&T readers to today’s and forthcoming EDA standards as we move towards sub-20 nm feature sizes. Guest Editors Shishpal Rawat and Sumit DasGupta have done a commendable job in taking the initiative and putting together this special issue with a set of selected articles, which include contributions by experts from various entities in this ecosystem (IDMs, EDA companies, etc.) as well as universities. These articles cover the landscape of research advances, practical experiences, and perspectives on future trends. The special issue covers system simulation, power modeling and low-power design, abstractions in hardware design, SystemC and SystemVerilog, and test and design-for-testability. Readers will also find our regular Last Byte column that looks at how our world will be without EDA standards, and the Standards column that provides an update on ongoing IEEE P1687 activities to extend the current version of IEEE 1149.1. Embedded test instruments and access to these test capabilities is highly relevant for today’s chips and systems (3D stacking, higher integration, heterogeneous systems, and so on). This issue also includes a review of two books on the role of automation in our society today, especially in the context of EDA tools and their impact on innovation, job creation (or disappearance), and technology acceleration. I thank Shishpal and Sumit for serving as Guest Editors of the special issue, the authors for their contributions, and the reviewers for their diligence and adherence to an extremely tight review schedule. I also thank the column editors for their contributions. I hope you will enjoy reading this special issue, as well as the subsequent issues of the revamped D&T in 2012. We have lined up an exciting set of special issues for the remainder of 2012 and we are now preparing the lineups for 2013. Inputs and participation from the D&T readership are always welcome!