Simple designs aren't easy, speaker says

Richard Goering, EE Times
(03/28/2006 8:45 PM EST)

SAN JOSE, Calif. — The best designs are simple designs, and the key to successful silicon intellectual property (IP) design is keeping code simple, said Synopsys fellow Michael Keating at the International Symposium on the Quality of Electronic Design (ISQED) here Tuesday (March 28). But that's a complicated matter, he said.

"Ultimately, the quality of a design depends on the simplicity of its execution," Keating said. "The art of design is the art of making the complex appear very simple."

Keating outlined two "basic rules of design" that he said are often violated in practice. One is that if it's not tested, it's broken. Another is that if it's not simple, it will never work.

Keating does IP development work at Synopsys, and during the past year he decided to work on some test chips to implement IP, similar to what customers would do. It was an "eye opening experience," he said.

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