Industry Expert Blogs

In the stories of the Wild West from the 1800s, the image of a cattle drive often is depicted. A small team of cowboys deliver thousands of heads of cattle to market. The cowboys spend many days crossing open land until they reach their destination -- one with stock yards to accept their precious herd, and a rail station to deliver it quickly to market. Along the way there are dangers, including losses by predators and mad stampedes by cattle rushing blindly when frightened or disturbed. The primary job of the cowboys is to keep the herd on track and settled as they move to ship-out.

I see immediate parallels between the cowboys of the Wild West and today's system-on-chip (SoC) design and verification engineers. Cowhands struggle to control and move a big herd. Similarly, today's design teams grapple with how to keep a project on target and converging to tape-out, and successful when the gate count of SoCs has become so large it can stretch and even overwhelm their ability to stay on track. How big are these new SoCs?

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