The IEEE has always been regarded as the final word when it comes to standards that impact electronics design. It is thus significant that several new EDA-related IEEE working groups have recently been formed (or re-activated), drawing on contributions by external "incubators" including Accellera and the Japanese JEITA organization. In a video interview at the recent DVCon 2014 conference, Stan Krolikoski provided some detail about these groups and their missions.
It would be hard to find anyone more knowledgeable about EDA standards than Krolikoski. He's chair of the IEEE Design Automation Standards Committee (DASC), secretary of Accellera, distinguished engineer at Cadence, and general chair of this year's DVCon conference. In this interview, he discusses the following working groups:
- IEEE 1666.1 - This group will standardize SystemC AMS, an analog/mixed-signal version of the SystemC language (IEEE 1666). SystemC AMS was developed in Accellera and was recently contributed to the IEEE.
- IEEE 1685 - IP-XACT was originally developed by the SPIRIT Consortium and further standardized by the IEEE in 2009. After SPIRIT was merged into Accellera, further updates were done in Accellera, and these updates have been contributed back to the IEEE for a revised standard in 2014.
- IEEE 2401 - Called "LSI-Package-Board," this new working group aims to provide a unified methodology for the late stages of IC design along with package and board design. It's based on work contributed by JEITA.
- IEEE 1735 - While not a new working group, this IP Encryption group is close to coming out with a set of recommended practices for IP security.
In the video, Krolikoski also discusses the expected donation of the Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) to the IEEE, where it will become a "recommended practice" for anyone who wants to reuse verification IP or other verification components.
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Richard Goering