By Lauro Rizzatti, General Manager of EVE-USA

DAC’s coming and, at EVE, we’re thinking about the evolution of emulation, a theme that you’ll hear more about from us. It’s been fascinating to look at how emulation has evolved from high-priced, hard-to-use clunkers introduced in the 1980s to sleek, low-cost hardware-assisted verification solutions that execute at high speeds.

At $1 million per seat, those early emulators were available to only the largest companies doing the most complicated designs. Cost alone prevented widespread deployment, and they quickly became outdated as new process technologies emerged, quashing their practicality and curbing accuracy. The maximum speed was about one MHz, slow even then, and they were roundly criticized for being difficult to set up. The designer’s lament was the excessive time to emulation.

Donald Cramb, Director of the Consulting Services Division, EVE-USA

Recently, I've started to see an interesting trend cropping up in SoC development. Companies and teams are adopting or "inheriting" the emulation platform of their vendor, partner, or customer to accelerate the SoC realization effort.

Adopting a common emulation platform allows multiple organizations to share data and replicate development environments. Emulation tests for a critical block from an IP vendor can be replicated in-house, and later used as a golden reference model for verification at the system level. Leveraging a common emulation platform and use model enables partners, vendors, and customers to share a high-performance software development environment. Integration testing, along with driver and application software development can occur at multiple sites in parallel prior to tapeout.

Cindy Wilson, Marcom Manager, EVE

By now, you probably know that social media is kind of a big deal. Social media is literally changing the world, having played a significant role in political scenes around the globe. Closer to home, social media marketing is changing the way we do business, providing access to online audiences like never before. If you need some more convincing on the value of social media marketing, you can check out my earlier blog post, What Is Up With Social Media?.

We know that social media is important for our business, but exactly how important—or perhaps more accurately, how effective—is it? How do we know if our social media campaigns are having any impact? The number of followers of your Twitter account or fans of your Facebook page doesn't give you the whole story. Are your links being clicked and reposted? How many people do you influence? Who else is talking about you (and what are they saying)? As social media has evolved into a critical marketing tool, a host of new technologies have been developed to help you answer these questions.

Lauro Rizzatti, General Manager of EVE-USA

Carol Hallett and I became fast friends in 2006 when EVE acquired Tharas Systems, where she was vice president of marketing and sales. From then on, we often met for coffee after she joined Real Intent to head marketing and sales. It's an upbeat and positive Carol who called me from her home in Twain Harte, Calif., near Yosemite National Park in mid January where the weather's a beautiful, though unseasonable, 60 degrees.

Donald Cramb, Director of the Consulting Services Division, EVE-USA

How long did your last EDA tool evaluation take? One month? Three? Six? The EDA industry seems to be the land of the never-ending evaluation. Of course, it’s totally understandable. EDA tools are amazingly complex, and thorough evaluation ensures that you are getting the right tool for the job.

Evaluations also come at a cost. There’s a direct cost to the evaluator, in that evaluations require internal resources that could otherwise be applied to a live project. There’s also an indirect cost to the industry as a whole, as EDA vendors have to loop the cost of evaluations back into the price of their products. Thus, it’s in everybody’s best interests to maximize the efficiency of evaluations. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why EDA evaluations can take forever.

Lauro Rizzatti, General Manager EVE-USA, EVE

Many readers of this Blog will know Luc Burgun as the 2010 EDA360 Idol winner who performed the specially tuned version of the Rolling Stones classic “Satisfaction,” charming attendees at that final Denali Party.

Luc is so much more than a good musician. For starters, he is CEO of EVE, a role he’s held since founding the company in 2000, unusual for the EDA industry. He and I sat over cups of espresso one overcast afternoon in San Francisco to catch up on his life. One of the first things we remarked on was how few technical founders of EDA startups remain in that position after the first few years.

Donald Cramb, Director of the Consulting Services Division, EVE

Looking at the mobile computing space today, we see a wide array of products filling every niche in the market. A consumer could easily own a smartphone, tablet, and eReader, even though there is significant overlap in functionality of these devices. Each has its strengths (and weaknesses) that causes the consumer to purchase more than one. For example, an eReader may leverage display technology that makes it superior to a tablet for reading outdoors. In other cases, multiple devices can complement each other. A cellphone could be used to provide tethering for a tablet. Consumers and manufacturers recognize that there is room for multiple products to coexist within the mobile ecosystem, and in recent years, I’ve seen the same pattern in hardware-assisted verification.

Cindy Wilson, Marcom Manager, EVE

It’s only January, but EVE’s event calendar for the first half of 2012 is filling quickly. We kicked off the year with a presentation by Luc Burgun, EVE’s president and CEO, at the 14th Annual Needham Growth Stock Conference January 10. This was the first time we were invited to participate and we were delighted. From all accounts, his presentation was well received.

Lauro Rizzatti, General Manager of EVE-USA

Not long ago, I overheard a thought-provoking exchange related to the demise of a beloved cultural icon. This conversation gave me pause to consider what intriguing new application is coming next that will displace another symbol of popular culture, much like what’s happened to local book and video stores or hard-wired landline phones. I’m sure some clever entrepreneur is already designing an enabling technology to open a new world for us, beyond our current habits. Gone may be a beloved local store or pink Princess phones, but consider the access to a variety of new adventures offered by these future innovations.

Ron Burns, Vice President of Sales EVE

rburns@eve-usa.com

We have a running joke in the EVE office in San Jose, Calif., that our children will keep us employed. The truth is, we’re not far off. Our kids are the driving force behind the development of new technology. They are using social media and downloading videos as forms of communication, networking and entertainment, and it’s a constant barrage on an already overworked Internet.