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

Värmland and Dalsland, and the Comeback of Nils Ericsson

This summer we took a road trip around in Värmland and Dalsland. This is a country of lakes, rivers, and canals slicing through the forest, but not many large cities (Karlstad excepted). Prototypical Swedish wooded countryside.

View out of a window at von Echstedtska gården.

Hardware Debuggers Have Become Really Capable!

A few weeks ago, I attended small event organized by Tasking. They showed their compilers, debuggers, and testing tools. It was all really interesting, but what really stood out to me is just how capable hardware-based debuggers are today. They can do some really quite incredible things.

AI and the Software Company Apocalypse

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the form of large language models (LLMs) has made quite incredible strides in coding capabilities in the past year. As a result, stocks of software companies are coming under pressure (the clumsily-named “SaaSpocalypse”). It seems that each time a new frontier model drops, the stock market reacts negatively. The underlying logic appears to be that “anyone can build their own software to do X” and that therefore existing companies selling software doing X are going to go out of business. I don’t think that checks out. AI is definitely causing massive changes to the software industry, but the Saaspocalypse looks overhyped.

CoPilot in Office – Making Some Use of AI

It seems everyone is using AI to help with their work – primarily coding but apparently also other things. Given that I generate a lot more Powerpoint slides than lines of code today, it has been a bit challenging to find any application of LLMs that might actually be helpful. However, the CoPilot function that Microsoft has added to Office might be promising. Here is my recent experience using the tools.

The HiPEAC 2026 Conference

Last week, I gave a keynote at the RAPIDO workshop, part of the HiPEAC 2026 conference taking place in Kraków, Poland. HiPEAC is a computer architecture conference with a rather wild-grown set of simultaneous workshops in addition to a main-stage paper program. It is an event for presenting research, EU projects, and for companies to recruit highly qualified people. I had a rather interesting time getting to the conference, a story told in a separate blog post.

Tricky Travel to Kraków

Last week I went to Kraków in Poland for the HiPEAC conference. Turned into one of the more dramatic-ish trips I have been on. To get to Kraków I had to go via Copenhagen, taking an early flight out of Stockholm. Maybe the choice of that early flight was not such a good idea given the properties of the airport in Kraków…

First Cadence Blog Post – SDV Europe

I have now posted my first blog post in the Cadence Community. It was just a matter of time after the VLAB team got acquired by Cadence earlier in 2025 I guess. The topic is the SDV Europe conference that happened in the first few days of December 2025.

A Visit to The Electrum Lab

Last week I had the joy of taking a tour of the Electrum Lab in Kista, Sweden. It is a cleanroom and semiconductor fab used for research, teaching, and commercial activities. I had heard about it for a long time, but I had absolutely no idea what they were doing there. Turns out to be quite impressive and important.

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.