Glad to hear JL likes the labs. This is the core of Xuropa - access to technology and the engineers who support and use it.

Of course, the community tools are there for interaction and support - chat, forum, review and feedback tools, etc. If they weren’t there, I’m sure there would be questions about why given that it’s 2009. (Already!?)

When all’s said and done, we’re talking about sophisticated development tools associated closely with complex engineering methodologies. (In the case of the Cadence MIPI Verification IP Lab it is OVM, Open Verification Methodology.) To make the tools and IP available without documentation, videos, presentations, and support and feedback channels would not help the user who’s looking to explore and learn.

While Twitter does resemble a community in some regards, I would not say that it provides a complete support infrastructure for something as sophisticated as the Incisive environment. Hence the forums, etc. in Xuropa.

The other issue with Twitter is that it is like writing in sand. It is ephemeral. I think there are two basic elements to a real community - sharing and building together. The Xuropa community tools enable both of these. Twitter enables sharing, but it does not build anything. And I certainly don’t expect it to host EDA tools. Same for Facebook and LinkedIn.

Dave Lin managed to capture other important short falls of Twitter in his comment. Twitter can be hard work, but it does have it’s benefits, as I mention in a previous post, What is Twitter, and Why Should I Care?.

An important note is that Xuropa is completely independent.

Our sole objective is to bring engineers and technology together. The rest is up to the members to build the community. We’re working hard to gather information, build tools and provide EDA tools to the community for the members to improve their skills, find new tools, and help each other.

Xuropa is not intended to be a social network, but a very professional one. It is building rapidly and from a good cross section of the entire electronic design chain. (I think I’ve found a couple of dozen EDA twitterers to date…but back to Dave’s comment, I really had to look hard.)

If someone wants to join the community and try out Cadence Verification products (and the link didn’t come out above), go here: http://www.xuropa.com. And welcome!