CONVENED THURSDAY June 12, 12:45pm - 1:45pm | Ballroom ABC
TOPIC AREA: SYSTEM LEVEL AND EMBEDDED
KEYNOTE: Idea to Implementation: A Different Perspective on System Design
KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Jack Little - President and Co-founder, The MathWorks, Inc. Today’s electronic devices are multifaceted, software-intensive systems that interact with the real world. These interactions create a new kind of complexity that increases pressure on engineering teams to deliver the right product under shrinking schedules. These multi-disciplinary teams are inhibited by gaps between the different tools and workflows they must use for system concept development, hardware design, and software development. Unless we connect these tools, we’ll continue to see missed deadlines and spiraling verification costs.
Emerging EDA and software techniques promise to address some complexity issues such as system-on-chip verification and distributed processing. These important advances are necessary but not sufficient, because system design has become more than silicon and software.
To develop any electronic system, engineers must now characterize the impact of the “next level system” – the system and environment in which their product must operate. For example, the design of the electronics and software in a hybrid electric vehicle depends on requirements imposed by vehicle dynamics, while a multimedia mobile phone’s design is impacted by network traffic.
In response to this challenge, we have seen a significant movement to bridge math-based system modeling with established hardware and software implementation and verification flows using Model-based Design. Central to this approach are multi-domain models that engineers use to specify and validate system behavior. The models provide the basis for design elaboration, automatic code generation, and earlier detection and correction of design flaws.
Leading automotive and aerospace companies have applied model-based design to accelerate embedded system development while improving software reliability, supported by a broad collection of vendors providing simulation, prototyping, implementation, and testing capabilities. Now this approach is rapidly extending into communications, electronics, industrial automation, and other industries as new tools, workflows, and partnerships are established to address design and verification problems that span systems, hardware, and software.
The solution to tomorrow’s design challenges won’t come solely from any one of the traditional tool categories, but from an interdisciplinary collaboration to deliver a complete tool chain that provides a flow from idea to system implementation. This will provide great value to companies that develop embedded systems and electronics, while creating growth opportunities for all tools that participate in the new workflow.
A Fellow of the IEEE and Trustee of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, he writes and speaks about technical computing, model-based design, entrepreneurship, and software industry issues.
Speaker: Jack Little - The MathWorks, Inc., Natick, MA