Denali CTO: Formalize contract between hardware, software

Dylan McGrath, EE Times
(09/12/2006 5:37 PM EDT)

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The semiconductor industry needs to revisit and redefine traditional boundaries between hardware and software, according to Mark Gogolewski, chief technology officer at intellectual property (IP) and EDA vendor Denali Software Inc.

Delivering the keynote address kicking off Denali's MemCon here Tuesday (Sept. 12), Gogolewski called for the industry to formalize the contract between hardware and software. This contract, he said, is represented by control registers, which represent the largest portion of a hardware functional specification or programmers guide.

"The registers go through constant change from the beginning of chip [design] to the end," Gogolewski said.

Paraphrasing an address given by Gary Smith, Gartner Dataquest's chief EDA analyst at the recent Design Automation Conference (DAC), said chip design costs have stayed relatively flat since 1997, but that overall IC development costs have grown considerably. Gogolewski, as Smith did, pointed to the cost of software development as the culprit.

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