Paul Graykowski News Today

Agile design methods have become mainstream in software development as traditional waterfall approaches cannot scale in large, fast-moving product schedules. System-on-chip (SoC) development teams have noticed and are enthusiastically adopting similar methods to accelerate schedules and become more nimble to in-process requirement changes.

Through a complex design process, some mistakes will inevitably slip by even the most expert system-on-chip (SoC) design teams. A disciplined V-model process (diagrammed below) will guard against many of these errors in the concept-to-design process (left arm) and in the verification-to-validation process (right arm).

Traceability can seem an obscure and/or bureaucratic concept to most. It entails cross-checking requirements between a spreadsheet, specifications, and the implementation and verification, rinse and repeat. From a view in the trenches where real problems must be solved, it can be hard to understand how this exercise adds value.