harry … the ASIC guy

(When Seth Godin posted this today, I knew I needed to add my voice to the discussion).

This past Sunday was already a bad day.

My 4 year old son had decided this was the day he would be “age appropriate” and assert his independence. (I won’t capture the details here, lest some day he decide to run for President, only to have this post show up on CNN and derail his campaign). As a result, he was no longer going to Mathew’s party, and Joyce and I weren’t going to get that 2 hour break we needed.

Instead, while Nate pouted in the other room, I tried to catch up on writing my blog post for Monday. I was halfway done when the little green DSL light started to blink and the Internet light went dark. At first, no panic. I had become used to these intermittent outages, usually lasting 2-3 minutes. Time to grab a Cherry Coke Zero, check on Nate, and all would be well when I came back.

Not exactly. The lights were still out. After about an hour, I decided I needed to prepare myself for the ordeal that is “Verizon customer support”. I’d called Verizon about half a dozen times with similar issues and knew my day was not going to get any better.

1st: The dreaded Voice Response System. After 30 years of using a touch tone phone, I know where the keys are, and so do most people. But instead of getting my customer info from my CallerID and routing met to a real person, I had to speak my way through 7 levels of voice response.

“No”.

“My phone number”

“Yes”

“Repair and Tech Support”

“DSL”

“Yes”

“Windows”

2nd: The dreaded wait on hold while listening to really bad music. The only break in the music was the voice interrupting every 20 seconds to tell me that my wait would be less than 10 minutes. Oh, and that I could get online support at the Verizon Web site. Duh!

3rd: 25 minutes later, a real person, who needs to once again verify my phone number and identity. After explaining the problem, he insists that I reboot my modem before he continue. Of course, having used Verizon before and being a hardware designer, that was the first thing I did. But he would not proceed unless I gave it one more try.

4th: “Do you have filters on the other lines?” “No, my filters somehow magically removed themselves from where they were a few hours ago”. I was getting annoyed now.

5th: “Maybe it’s your jack”. I knew it was not, but he was not going to help me until I went through the motions. So he had me crawl under the desk and disconnect the modem and reconnect in the living room to another jack. This took me 5 minutes…no difference. Then another 5 minutes to put the modem back where it was.

6th: “Could it be a problem on Verizon’s end?” I asked. “We’d know immediately if we had a problem in your area and there is no problem”.

7th: “We’ll send a technician out tomorrow. Please hold while I get dispatch on the line. It will be about 5 minutes”.

8th: 15 minutes later, “the dispatch computer system is down, so I can’t put you in touch with them. I’ll put this in as high priority and you’ll be called back within half an hour to schedule an appointment”

9th: 2 hours later, I get a call that someone will be out between 8am and 5pm. Yah, like we’ll sit home waiting all day. I ask them to call ahead and they say they’ll call half an hour before they come.

10th: 15 minutes later I get an automated call telling me that my issue was resolved. I look at the blinking DSL light and the black Internet light and say “NO”. OK, they’ll still come out.

11th: Late afternoon Monday, Joyce, who is trying to launch a new business (shameless plug), calls to see where they are. (See 1-3 above, except add in talking to someone in India who evidently had never heard numbers spoken out loud). “They came by at 12:10 and nobody was there”. Not true, she was there. In any case, they had determined that the problem was on Verizon’s end, despite their original assurance to the contrary (see #6), and it was fixed. Indeed, solid green lights.

12th: Since Monday, the outage seems to have been resolved, but it’s back to the 2-3 minute intermittent outages. So I call up again and this time speak to Derrick. He reads or recites from memory the standard excuses:

“It could be thunderstorms”.

“This is LA…we have 2 thunderstorms a year.”

“Could be that we were doing an upgrade”

“Several times a day”?

In any case, I insist that they open a ticket and someone tell me why my connection is so intermittent and fix it.

“You’ll be contacted within 48 hours.” Ticket # 197518950

Stay Tuned.

harry the ASIC guy

This evening was the first Blogging Birds of a feather session at DAC. It was a very interesting session, mostly involving discussions between the “real journalists” in the room and the other bloggers. John Ford has already posted a very good summary of the meeting on DFT Digest, so please click over there to find out more. I’m also interested to see what the “real press” has to say.

harry the ASIC guy

“Offshore drilling?”

That’s what a puzzled ASIC designer would have asked with bewilderment if you mentioned the term “off-shoring” 10 years ago. But today the world is flat and off-shoring means global teams, working ’round the clock in 6 cities on 3 continents in 4 timezones on 1 chip. And it’s not just off-shoring and out-sourcing driving this globalization. Design teams for complex chips can have 100 - 150 designers doing tasks ranging from RTL design, verification, physical design, software and firmware development, mixed signal design, and so on. You just can’t find all the designers you need with the right expertise in one place or even in one company.

There are economic factors causing us to work remotely as well. Last week, American Airlines announced that they would start charging for baggage and other airlines are also raising their fares due to record oil prices. Companies, already watching the bottom line, are encouraging their people to travel less, just as they did several years ago after 9/11. Telecommuting has become accepted, even encouraged in many companies as a way to promote better employee lifestyles, save on office space, and be more “green”. As a result, for most of us, the days of the co-located design teams are as long gone as Hillary’s campaign.

Of course, these same ASIC and software design teams have designed and continue to design the technologies that enable effective collaboration between these dispersed teams. The high-speed networks that are the backbone that make it all possible. The IP routers. The graphics and specialized processors.

And let’s not forget the software applications that run on this hardware … Wikis for collaboration … WebEx, Sametime, and NetMeeting for remote meetings … Skype and Vonage for cheap global conferencing … video-conferencing … instant messaging … Twitter … Second Life … social networks like LinkedIn and FaceBook.

These technologies are impressive. Several years ago, I worked out of my home in Southern California, managing projects with team members in Silicon Valley, Arizona, Colorado, Washington State, Vancouver, Texas, Florida, Ottawa, and Bangalore. We conference called and held WebEx meetings. We worked on the same hosted environment through secure VPN. When necessary, we got up early (5 AM) or stayed up late (1 AM) to collaborate with team members half-way around the world. And these teams were able to get the job done as a result of their strong skills, hard work, and the technology that allowed them to work together. But, something was still missing and thanks to my sister-in-law I now realize what it was.

Face Time!

Our kids keep us pretty busy, so when Evelyn suggested that we need more “face time” with our kids, Joyce and I were flabbergasted. More face time? Don’t we already spend enough time getting them ready for school, dinner, or bed, taking them to this or that activity, helping with homework? Are there more than 24 hours in a day?

The truth is, although these parenting activities are important, they are not really face time. Face time is not about getting things done … it’s about getting to know one another better. Obviously, this makes a lot of sense if you are a parent, but you’re probably wondering what face time has to do with ASIC design? After all, this isn’t eHarmony or Parenting 101.

Several years ago, I attended a one-day class entitled Managing Virtually: What Works, taught by Lu Ellen Schafer of Global Savvy. Lu Ellen gave great advice on using email effectively, “drive-by-phoning” to stay in touch, collaboration tools, and especially on the difference between cultures (fascinating). But one thing stood out that she said. “Initial face-to-face interaction leads to greater remote communication.” She continued by pointing out that “informal email exchanges often do not happen among new team members until they meet face-to-face”. My friend Ron put it another way, “email is a great way to continue a relationship and a lousy way to start one”. And studies have shown this as well.

As for me, much of my day is consumed by discussions, meetings, and conference calls with co-workers, clients, and vendors. But that’s not really face time, even the face-2-face meetings. Face time is about getting to know one another and what the other person cares about. It’s something I’ve tried to do, but probably did not do enough. Go out to lunch. Go to a ballgame. Take a flight to meet a new person in the organization or on the team. Plan a team-building event and fly in the remote people. I’ve always found it easy to find excuses not to do these things … too busy … no budget … next time. But in the end, I always regret it because there is something missing. Something that feels like “trust”.

As a program manager, I recall three specific situations in which there was not enough trust because there was not enough face-time. In one case, there was some very nasty inter-personal conflict happening, but neither party trusted me enough to share their concerns until the situation was too far along. In another case, one remote team member felt he was being ignored by another remote team member, but he did not want to “bother” me with the issue. In the third instance, one team member decided to overrule another team member’s recommendations because “he knew better”. In that last case, once they met face-to-face, these two designers became a great tandem.

We all have to decide … Face Time or FaceBook?

This is not just a philosophical question but a practical one. I became aware a few days ago of a new social media company called Xuropa. From what I can gather from the website, the Xuropa Tradeshow Platform let’s you attend tradeshows at your desk. There are booths, suites, labs, demos … just like DAC, without the face time. So next year you may have a choice, DAC or eDAC?

As for me, I’m gonna have lunch on Friday with some people I haven’t seen in months. What about you?

harry the ASIC guy

Every year on March 19th, the swallows wing their way back to San Juan Capistrano. Just up the road in Anaheim, designers from around the world will fly in for the 45th Annual Design Automation Conference, held June 8th - 13th. How appropriate will it be then, when EDA and ASIC design bloggers flock to the 1st annual DAC Birds-of-a-Feather session on blogging?

Perhaps you are a blogger or are thinking of becoming a blogger or know somebody who is a blogger. Perhaps you are a marketing director or just curious. Whatever your interest, you’ll want to come meet and engage with the bloggers who are growing in quantity, quality and industry influence:

• Quantity: A quick check of the DAC home page shows 17 industry blogs, and there are at least a dozen more, including yours truly.
• Quality: Topics as diverse as verification, design for test, analog design, semiconductors, memory, good design techniques, and standards, are discussed by design experts who actually use the tools and do the work.
• Influence: These blogs have influenced standardization efforts and challenged the status quo.

This event will be held in Rooms 201B and 201C at the Anaheim convention center on Wednesday, June 11 at 6pm.

I am helping to coordinate this session, so if you are planning to attend, just drop a quick email to harry {at} theASICguy {dot} com so we can get an idea for how large a group we will have. If you are a blogger and would like to present or be part of a panel, please let me know as well.

I hope to see and meet many of you there.

harry the ASIC guy

Last Saturday night I went to a family Seder to celebrate the first night of Passover. You know, like in The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston. As part of the Seder, we read a story of 4 sons, one wise, one contrary, one simple, and one unable to ask a question.

This got me thinking about some of the contrary ASIC designers I’ve worked with through the years … you know the type:

1. If everyone else wants to take road A, he wants to take road B.
2. If everyone else wants to take road B, he wants to take road C.
3. If you’ve got a plan, he’ll tell you why it won’t work.
4. Once he takes a stand on an issue, he’ll never give up.
5. He doesn’t really care what others think about him.
6. Every battle is worth fighting … to the death.

The contrarian ASIC designer can sap the energy and optimism out of a design team with all his negativity. Obviously, not good. So, why would anyone want to work with a contrarian?

Well, I’m here to tell you that the contrarian gets a bad rap and he can be a critical member of the team. First, some background…

Most law schools use a method of contrarian argument based upon the Socratic Method, that goes something like this:

• A legal decision to consider is chosen
• One student or the professor argues one interpretation
• Another student is assigned to argue the opposite position.

It does not matter what the individuals actually believe. They need to argue their assigned position as vigorously as they can. The goal is not for there to be a winner or loser in the argument. The goal is for the students to get the most complete and thorough understanding of the issue under consideration as possible. And only by giving both sides equal status can this be done. In the end, the law students emerge better prepared.

So, again, why would anyone want to work with a contrarian? In short, because the contrarian keeps the rest of us honest.

Consider the 6 behaviors of a contrarian that I mentioned earlier. Viewed within the context of law school argument, the contrarian is simply holding up his end of the bargain, to represent the opposite viewpoint. He’s the one most likely to find the holes that would otherwise eventually kill the project. Sure, he may find 9 holes that are not real for every real hole. But the one real hole he finds probably never would have been found by anyone else. In that sense, the contrarian is actually the ultimate optimist, because he’s the one trying the hardest to protect project success.

So, when you see that Contrarian on your project the next time, give him a hug…well, maybe not.

I spoke in previous posts about Aart DeGeus’ keynote address and the VMM/OVM controversy at SNUG 2008 San Jose. In this post, I’d like to share my thoughts about my favorite presentation at SNUG, what made it so compelling, and what lessons we can take away as presenters.

Michael Keating, Synopsys Fellow and co-author of the Reuse Methodology Manual and Low Power Methodology Manual, presented a Tuesday afternoon (right after lunch!) Vision Session entitled “The Future of Low Power”. If you can access this presentation, great. Even better, Synopsys recorded the presentation and will hopefully make it generally available on their Website, much like a similar talk at the 2007 ARM Developers’ Conference.

So, what made this presentation so special compared to the others? Mike followed some of the basic rules of great presentations:

1. Be Relevent – Design for low power and functional verification are the top issues facing designers in the next 5-10 years. There are new techniques and methodologies in play and also new science (even nanotech). This made for a topic that had a lot of interest to all ASIC designers.
2. Know Your Stuff – It was obvious that Michael was personally very experienced in the technology of which he spoke. It would have been equally obvious had the case been otherwise.
3. Relax – Easier said than done when addressing hundreds of your customers and peers. Michael seemed very at ease and that probably helped him to focus on the message.
4. Talk Like a Real Person – It felt the same speaking to Mike up-front after his presentation than it did listening to him deliver his presentation. The audience was comfortable with his conversational style of presentation and that gave him a lot of credibility (compared to over-the-top marketing pitches).
5. Use Visuals to Aid Your Message – This is the key point I wish to make. The slides were not the message and did not contain the message, as is too often common in PowerPoint presentations. How often do we see slides that have bullets that the presenter will read, hence making him superfluous? Instead, Mike delivered his message talking to the audience and the slides served to support and reinforce his message.
6. Make Room for the Audience – Ideally, impromptu audience interaction allows the audience to be part of the discussion and to stay more connected. The constraints of the presentation … a large hall with hundreds of attendees … did not allow for that kind of interactivity during the presentation. So, Mike allowed plenty of time at the end for questions and comments and he welcomed them, even if dissenting opinions were expressed.

So…what was a great presentation that you attended, at SNUG or elsewhere? … What are your top presentation tips or presentation no-nos? … Your pet peeves?

harry the ASIC guy

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