[Triumf-seminars] TRIUMF Technical Seminar today at 14:00

[TRIUMF Seminars]

Date/Time: Mon 2014-01-20 at 14:00

Location:  Auditorium          

Speaker:   Yair Linn (TRIUMF)

Title:     Hierarchical Design and HDL Reuse for Electronics Development at TRIUMF

Abstract: The development of real time software and firmware at TRIUMF is rather chaotic and it would very much benefit from industry proven standardized design methodology. One serious issue has to do with the manpower involved in a given project which ranges from experienced engineers with partial commitment to the project and physicists (student and postdoc) fully committed to the project but often lacking experience. Without design management methodology code gets lost, system maintenance is difficult and in the worst case scenario it could lead to wrong physics results. Bad version control and design methodologies that don't talk to each other are a fertile source of problems and delays. Many groups in TRIUMF use SVN -- that's good, but it's not enough. SVN is an archiving system, but it takes effort to make it a real version control system. In this lecture I will show how we can easily adapt standard practices from the semiconductor industry to make our work at TRIUMF infinitely more productive. Microchip design in the semiconductor industry is much more stringent than FPGA, software, and PCB design that we do in TRIUMF, because  microchip (ASIC) manufacture typically costs millions of dollars. A mistake in just a single transistor can mess up the entire chip and cost hundreds of millions of dollars in manufacturing costs, time-to-market, and market share. In semiconductor companies, strict version control is necessary to avoid errors; also, thousands of engineers work on the same chip, and a standardized, hierarchical design methodology is the only way to go. I worked in PMC-Sierra, Canada's largest chipmaker, based in Burnaby. The methods I will discuss are based on PMC-Sierra's design methods. What I will show here is a small subset of the design procedures used in PMC-Sierra, just enough to give us all the benefits without the bureaucratic encumbrance. We will be using these methods in the Electronics Development Group, but everyone who develops electronics or software at TRIUMF, or manages such projec
ts, is encouraged to come and listen, to see whether such methods would be a good fit for their projects.



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General TRIUMF seminar information available at http://www.triumf.ca/home/upcoming-events/about-seminars-lectures