There hasn’t been too much agreement between the experts and me so far in this series, but I read today’s episode and I have to say I don’t have a lot to add technically. So on this occasion I say congratulations to all – including Ed Sperling because the questions were spot on.

Now, I said I agreed with them – technically. What happen part way through is something I find very tedious in the EDA industry and that is bickering over standards.

LPE: You mentioned VMM, and there’s been a lot of talk about how that stacks up against OVM. Does it matter which methodology verification engineers use?
Pangrle (Barry Pangrle Mentor): Open standards matter. Mentor has donated technology for UCIS (Unified Coverage Interoperability Standard) and everyone has access to the UCDB (Unified Coverage Database) work that we have put together in terms of helping track information on coverage. […]

Good for you Mentor. This is what I like to see.

Borgstrom: The debate sometimes gets a bit tiresome. The industry seems to love a controversy. The VMM came out in 2005, so it’s been in production for five years. It has more than 500 successful tapeouts, […]. One thing we’ve heard is that customers want a single industry standard methodology that’s driven by an open standards body so they can have interoperable verification environments. When we first released VMM it was the first open methodology with a specification. […]

Also, good for you Tom. You kept to the point. Gave the good points and direction that you were going in. You stuck to the facts.

Pangrle: Sometimes you guys have nasty ties when you download your software, though. There are strings attached.

Uh oh. Here we go…

Borgstrom: It’s a standard Apache 2.0 license. There are no strings attached.
Pangrle: The .lib parsers supposedly are open, but there are statements in the access language about if there’s ever any dispute arising between the two companies then you immediately lose access.
Borgstrom: I thought we were talking about verification here. I’m not the right person to talk to about .lib. But VMM is available under Apache 2.0.

Now that was what really gets to me. This should not be tolerated. So shame on you Barry. Tom then tries to get things back on course:

Borgstrom: In any event, there are two methodologies that have gotten attention. The cry I hear is from users who want one standard methodology and get on with innovating.

Pangrle: Does that mean Synopsys is going to support OVM?
Borgstrom: We support developing an open industry standard driven by an industry organization like Accellera. There has been great work done by the Accellera subcommittee. The next step will be to come up with a common base class library that will go a long way toward bringing unity and progress here.

LPE: What do the other participants think about this?
Narain (Prakash Narain RealIntent) : We’re neutral. We don’t have a stake here.
Rizzatti (Lauro Rizzatti EVE): We run a survey each year, and one of the questions is VMM vs. OVM. VMM is ahead of OVM in terms of checkmarks by visitors, but it’s not by much.

I am glad at this point that Ed changed the subject rather than allowing this disgrace to continue.

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Brian Bailey – keeping you covered