Crystal Bulb: Sharing Design Intelligence - Published on Semiwiki
Communiqué de Semiwiki.com - February 1st, 2018
[Attachment]There is a trend among design companies to want to extract more intelligence, from designs in-process and designs past, in support of optimizing total enterprise efficiency. Design automation companies see opportunity in leveraging this interest since they, in various ways, have a handle on at least part of the underlying data. The question of course is what constitutes a sufficient base of design information to support extracting information that will be widely useful to the enterprise. That depends on what sort of information you want to extract.
Design data management companies are making a play in this space because they have a good handle on the chip design bill-of-materials (BOM) view (and perhaps aspects of the software), if not packaging, reference board and documentation. Some even go deeper into some IP, reading OpenAccess (OA) physical databases and netlists. This unquestionably extends their ability to mine more information for those types of design object, though it is unclear how deep an understanding they have of higher-level design semantics.
[Attachment] Access to this information is what Magillem leverages through their CrystalBulb product. Pascal Chauvet (Strategic Account Manager) told me they have extended the scope of what can be understood, beyond the IP-XACT schema, through a Magillem schema cover to the chipset and board level (he expects these features may eventually be suggested as extensions to the standard). CrystalBulb runs on a server, accessing data from distributed teams and providing that data either though web-based dashboard or through standard file format (Excel, text, PDF). At this stage Magillem doesn't emphasize need for an API and scripting to aid gathering data, (though they do provide a RESTful API), instead stressing a simpler (non-programming) approach through filters, which seem appropriate for the wide user-base they are targeting. Pascal also mentioned that they currently work with customers on any extensions they might require. As an example of usage, Pascal pointed to the needs of an application engineer doing software bring-up on first product samples. This engineer will need to understand the correlation between IP versions, IP configuration, chip-level functional modes, IO muxing, die pads/IC package pin-bonding and board. Old way: dig through all the documentation, talk to the design team, learn 'oh yeah, we changed that configuration at the last minute and it didn't yet get to documentation'. New way: all the latest data is available real time. The product is designed for viewing data rather than editing (as it should be as an analytics system) and provides all the standard infrastructure for access control, following areas of interest and supporting review with annotations by stakeholders across the enterprise. Again, a more dynamic and real-time way to support enterprise-wide alignment and signoff. Overall CrystalBulb looks like an interesting step towards widely-accessible analytics based on structured design. You can learn more about CrystalBulb HERE.
Magillem Design Services SA published this content on 06 February 2018 and is solely responsible for the information contained herein.
Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 06 February 2018 14:14:07 UTC.
Original documenthttp://blog.magillem.com/crystal-bulb-sharing-design-intelligence/
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