Observations from Uppsala – Computer simulation, programming, software, technology, research, and more (since 2007)

The 0b111111 DAC –More Systems and Software

I have been a semi-regular attendee at the Design Automation Conference going back to 2008 or so, and over the years I have slowly drifted towards EDA (Electronics Design Automation). I have presented various talks as part of the “engineering track” at the DAC, always in some kind of “systems” category. This has now come to its logical conclusion, when I step up and join the Engineering Track Technical Program Committee (TPC), taking care of the Systems and Software topic. We need more systems and more software at the DAC!

DVCon Europe 2025 – Virtual Platforms and a Real Party

DVCon Europe 2025 took place on October 14 and 15, with the SystemC Evolution Day on the 16th. I was there, running around talking to people, taking photos, and listening to presentations. Just like it usually is. Great conference, great fun, great learning! The conference dinner was back by popular demand, and there was a lot of virtual platforms.

DVCon Europe 2025 – Boys in the Hood[ies] and their Song

The DVCon Europe conference dinner was back this year, and I was responsible for a little bit of entertainment. Due to a lack of microphone technique on my part, I have to assume that what I sang was at least partially lost on the audience. So here it is! Along with some notes (but no musical notes).

“Pre-Silicon and Post-Silicon Virtual Platforms” – Computer and System Architecture Unraveled Event Six

After a rather long break, we finally had another Computer and System Architecture Unraveled meetup. This time, we had two speakers talking about virtual platforms. Fredrik Larsson from the Simics team at Intel addressed pre-silicon use cases, and Jakob Engblom from the VLAB Works team at Cadence (i.e., myself) talked about uses in Automotive and embedded (mostly post-silicon).

It Must be the Antivirus

I recently got access to a sparkling new demo machine for VLAB. Based on an AMD 9950X3D processor coupled with fast RAM and a blazing SSD. This is a perfect machine for running virtual platforms, with arguably the best microarchitecture available and a huge L3 cache (which is known to benefit code like simulations). Installed in a box that allows sustained 5GHz+ clocks. Nice. But when I started to run VLAB, things did not seem right. It took a long time to start a new simulation and some things just seemed “off”. What could be wrong?

DAC 2025 – All About AI

The 62nd Design Automation Conference (DAC 62) took place in San Francisco, California, USA, from June 22 to 25, 2025. It was the first time in three years that I attended the DAC (this blog is a little bit late, sorry for that). For those that do not know, the DAC is the biggest show in EDA, combining a major research conference with an industry exhibition and engineering track. This year the theme was AI (Artificial Intelligence), and not much else.

Dat Dell Display is Doopid

I just fixed the strangest problem with my home office setup. The solution was as simple as the problem was weird to begin with. Conclusion: the IT checklists makes sense.

Working in EDA for Real (Finally)

In late May, the VLAB Works part of ASTC was acquired by Cadence, and as a result I am finally working in EDA for real. What a change! When I started working with the Simics simulator at Virtutech in 2002, we were at pains to distance ourselves from EDA. Now, almost 25 years later, I am working in one of the big three EDA companies.

Testing Mistral Le Chat (Coding and Understanding Code)

I am coming back to my project of testing AI models, local and in the cloud, on a few coding problems that seem surprisingly difficult. The models I used in my previous posts (analyze code, write code, reason about code) were mostly from the US or China, even though I did try the French Mistral-7B model. In this post, I test the full-power cloud-based Mistral Le Chat, as well as the midsize local Codestral model. Time to try the European AI!

Teaching Platform-Spanning Systems Again

I reprised my gig from last year and taught the course Platform-Spanning Systems at Uppsala university during the first quarter of 2025. It is always fun to get back the university and enjoy the atmosphere and the enthusiasm and fearlessness of students. The course went better than last year (in my opinion), in part thanks to the sponsorship from Bahnhof that provided us with virtual machines for the students to run their code.

What I Saw at the Embedded World 2025

Last week, I visited the Embedded World (2025). Only the exhibition, not the conference part. It was great to be back again, meeting old friends and making new acquaintances in the embedded business. I already told you the dramatic story of how I got there. This blog is about what I saw at the show – trends and technologies.

A Lucky Trip to the Embedded World (2025)

Last week, I visited the Embedded World (2025). Only the exhibition, not the conference part. It was great to be back again, meeting old friends and making new acquaintances in the embedded business. It turns out I was rather lucky in getting there at all – there was that now infamous strike.

“Unusual Perspectives on AI” – Computer and System Architecture Unraveled Event Five

The fifth CaSA, Computer and System Architecture Unraveled, meetup took place on January 30. We finally gave in and joined the AI hype train, resulting in an event with a somewhat different audience and different discussions. More society and applications, less computer architecture. Our two presenters were Håkan Zeffer from SambaNova Systems and Björn Forsberg from RI.SE (doing his second CaSA presentation!). Håkan talked about the architecture of the Sambanova AI processors, and Björn about AI compilers.

New Job, New Simulator

As already leaked by LinkedIn, I recently started a new job at ASTC, as Global Technical Marketing Manager for the VLAB virtual platform product. This is my first major change of job I since I joined Virtutech to work on the Simics simulator back in 2002. It is both a big change and a small change – staying in the world of virtual platforms, but working with a new product that is quite different from Simics. In fact, more things are different and new and fresh than the same…

(Local) AI, Please Reason about Code

“Reasoning” models have become popular as a way to expand the capabilities of large language models (LLMs). Such models take more time “considering” a prompt and iterating it through the model several times, with the goal of mimicking how a human might go about solving a problem by breaking it down into steps. I tried the reasoning QwQ model on the coding problems from my previous blog posts (1,2). Quite funny and elucidating; I will quote the replies in full as they are worth reading.