Application Specific System-Design and Verification at Embedded World and DVCon

This week (February 25^th 2013) is a busy one for system development and the Cadence System Development Suite in particular. For mobility, the place to be is Barcelona -- the Mobile World Congress will show the latest in everything mobile and connected. For Embedded Systems development the place to be is Nuremberg, Germany, where Embedded World opens its doors as one of the biggest events in the world for embedded developments in both software and hardware. In San Jose, California, DVCon will be the place to be for everything related to verification, including hardware/software verification in the context of each other.

Personally I will be in Nuremberg. It seems like I drew the short straw considering that it is predicted to be 39 degrees F there on Tuesday, compared to 53 degrees F in Barcelana and 64 degrees F in San Jose. Still, I'll agree with Alan Tringham of ARM that Nuremberg was the right choice. In his Blog post he points out that the Internet of Things (IoT) as well as Embedded Software Development will be two key themes. And I had already previously pointed to same theme in an article on the IoT for Electronics Weekly.

What made this year fun was that the System Development Suite demo preparations for Embedded World and DVCon could leverage each other -- a clear sign that system-level design and verification are tightly interrelated. So what are we showing?

At Embedded World automotive is one of the key target application domains we are covering. From an electronics perspective, four key themes are in focus, as shown in the graph above:

• Intra Vehicle Networking is a huge theme these days. Various connections vie for data they can carry across the car -- CAN, MOST, LIN, FlexRay and Ethernet. While we from a development tools perspective are pretty neutral on what connection carries what type of data, and who might win the MOST/Ethernet battle, networking overall is a key aspect for our system design tools as well as for the design and verification IP Cadence is licensing.
• Consumerization within the car is the second key theme. The crossing line to mobility becomes very blurry here, given the multimedia and connectivity aspects of the technology in the dashboard. Also, everything called "infotainment" looks very similar to what we see in mobile phones and tablets. Convergence everywhere! From a development tools perspective the challenges look strikingly similar between these domains. Certainly hardware and software need to be considered together.
• Body Electronics, i.e. everything under the hood, is the third key theme. Here the requirements are very automotive specific. Real time aspects need to be considered, checked with assertions and validated. But even here software and hardware work hand in hand and the solutions provided in our System Development Suite find their adoption, especially in connection with analog/mixed-signal effects representing the system environment that electronic contol units (ECUs) reside in.
• The Internet of Things (IoT) is the fourth key theme, and here it is all about the car, as well as pieces of the car being connected to the system infrastructure. I had previously given some examples in "It's the Data, Stupid" and look forward to seeing some of them shown at the exhibition. Of course the IoT is not limited to just car related aspects, it easily extends to cows and sheep and of course to medical aspects.

Given that the distinction between application domains become more and more blurry, it was easy for our demo teams to leverage of each other. A summary of demos is shown in the graphic below.

The key themes from a tool perspective are links to implementation and links to the environment. The latter occurs with analog-mixed signal simulation and connections from Palladium XP emulation and RPP FPGA based prototyping via SpeedBridges, as well smarter combinations of the different engines, such as the combination of virtual platforms with accelerated or simulated RTL.

We look forward to seeing you in Nuremberg at Embedded World or San Jose at DVCon. If you are in Nuremberg, find me at the Cadence booth or the ECSI workshop "Embedded Software Development on Virtual Platforms - Are We Ready For Industrial Deployment?" at which I will present on Tuesday at 16:30 together with Methods2Business on development since DAC last year. See you there! 

Frank Schirrmeister