Commentary: ESL success demands outsourcing

Bryn Parry and Christopher Lennard, ARM
(01/05/2007 2:40 PM EST), EE Times

Job applications are up on corporate websites: seeking engineer with C++ / SystemC experience, knowledge of the hardware development process, experience in system verification, 3 to 5 years experience in system-on-chip design, understanding of OS porting issues a plus. Critical position, starts immediately!

It's just a call for an electronic system level (ESL) engineer, but the phone stays silent. Why? In 2000, ESL became the "next big thing" for business and universities, but the lack of sufficiently qualified engineering is still throttling the up-take of system-level design.

In 2007, the intellectual property (IP) and EDA industry businesses that have invested in ESL need to take a hard and practical look at themselves. Theoretically, it is obvious how system-level design can improve product quality and time to market by enabling fast simulation platforms and early design exploration. Practically, it is a much different story.

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