Computer simulation, programming, software, technology, research, and more (since 2007)
How important is the documentation (manual, user guide, instruction booklet) for the actual quality and perceived quality of a product? Does it materially affect the user? I was recently confronted by this question is a very direct way. It turned out that the manual for our new car was not quite what you would expect…
This is just the first page, and as you can see if you know Swedish or German or both, it is a strange interleaving of sentences in the two languages.
Carbon Design Systems keeps putting out interesting blog posts at a good pace. 
Bill Neifert at recently put up a blog post about the various of speed/accuracy tradeoffs you can make when building virtual platforms. The main message of the blog is that you should use a mix of fast models (TLM + JIT, like the ARM Fast Models) and cycle-accurate generated-from-RTL models (like the models generated by Carbon’s tools). By switching between the levels of abstraction when you need to go fast or go deep, you get something that is pretty much the best of both worlds (I already blogged about the change between abstraction before). It makes perfect sense, and I am all with him. There are dragons in the middle land.
However, I do not quite agree with Bill about the absolute uselessness of the intermediate types of models, like SystemC TLM-2.0 AT. Basically, what is traditionally called “cycle accurate modeling” (while not derived from RTL).
Continue reading “Dragons can be Useful – when AT Models Make Sense”
Carbon Design Systems have been on a veritable blogging spree recently, pushing out a large number of posts around various topics. Maybe a bit brief for my taste in most cases (I have a tendency to throw out 1000+ word pseudo-articles when I take the time to write a blog), but sometimes very interesting nevertheless. I particularly liked a few posts on cache analysis, as they presented some good insight into not-quite-expected processor and cache behaviors.
There is a new post at my Wind River blog, about the design and technical contents of the new Simics Quick Start Platforms, more widely known as the QSP. The blog describes the virtual-only hardware that forms part of the QSP, and how it was designed. It is interesting to note that the hardware ended up a bit more complex that I initially thought it would be, since an ideal virtual platform should be very simple. Right? Turns out an OS complicates things.
Continue reading “Wind River Blog: Inside the Simics QSP – Additional Notes”
I finally got to spend some time at the DAC show floor on Thursday (which was day four and the last day of the show). It was very quiet, not many people around, and many booths also running with low staffing. However, unlike the Embedded Systems Conference, this last day was not indicative of the show overall.