Too many cooks spoil the broth

I get a few e-mail each day from a something called Eda-cafe. (www.edacafe.com) I'm not quite sure why they send so many e-mails, but if you take a peak about once a week at the newletter, you can identify the 2-3 things which have changed since the last time you glanced at it.

Yesterday, I was glad to see there were two articles on Verification. Interestingly, they were both from people in the same company (MosChip Semiconductor). I'm not sure if that was the intention of the writers, but I believe it's not a bad way to attract good verification engineers to your company. Being in a place which encourages development of verification skills, seeing verification in a broader context, and encouraging engineers to publish their ideas is win-win for everybody. Verification engineers will develop and sharpen their skills and management will get both better verification and good reason for their bright engineers to stick around.

Sunil's article ( http://www10.edacafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?section=UserArticles&articleid=258632) was intersting to me, in that it talks about a more holistic approach to verification. I believe it is interesting to see that similar trends in other fields apply to verification as well. I believe the trend being developed is to look more at the broader picture in order to find out how to optimize locally. I identify well with his example of the "functional formal verification tool" and how (if you listen to vendors) you can dispose of other tools and methods if you just use this.

Whether it be a formal tool or any other, no single tool can replace everything, and like a good cook the up and coming generation of verification engineers need to choose a mix of spices and herbs, find a healthy entree, time their cooking, frying and baking to specification, and manage with way too many people in the kitchen.

Akiva