Comprehensive Functional Verification: The Complete Industry Cycle (Systems on Silicon) Review

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Comprehensive Functional Verification: The Complete Industry Cycle (Systems on Silicon) ReviewEveryone engaged in functional verification of digital hardware designs should read this book. It truly is comprehensive (which means that it can't go into depth on everything), but there is a very good amount of depth on most of the topics that should be covered by such a book, as much depth as 704 pages would allow.
This book is not about languages but about concepts, which are more important. Having said this, HDLs, HVLs and programming languages are used for illustration. Such concepts include re-use strategies for verification components (although the essential topic of revision control is sadly only mentioned in passing), formal verification and escape analysis.
I'm troubled by the very short Acknowledgments section. The authors were fortunate to have Scott Taylor as a reviewer. I worked with Scott on Compaq's Alpha microprocessor team and he is very talented. However, there are quite a few mistakes in the book and some paragraphs that could have been written more clearly. The authors would have benefited from more peer review. For example, Wolfgang Roesner and I were together at IBM on the POWER6 microprocessor in 2004 and 2005, but he never asked me for help!
At Cosmic Horizon, I had been working alone (until recently) on verification of the Sputnik microprocessor. For assistance in debugging the integer multiplication unit, I found it useful to create a cycle-accurate reference model. Working alone, I was forced to come up with many such ideas on my own, so I became curious about how other verification experts think. I bought the book to learn about that. Yes, I had worked at IBM myself, but I hadn't experienced everything while I was there, and I wanted to solidify in my mind why we did things the way we did. Since reading CFV, I have begun to morph Cosmic Horizon's FSS product according to some of the book's better ideas. For example, the test case database no longer contains expected results. Instead, I am developing a cycle-ignorant (my idea, necessary for architectural verification) reference model to generate expected results on-the-fly.
I was attracted to this language-nonspecific book written by three IBM microprocessor verification engineers because I focus on microprocessors (and would like to return to IBM), but the book successfully remains general enough to apply to non-microprocessor digital hardware designs as well. As I said, everyone should read this book.
And Wolfgang, call me next time!Comprehensive Functional Verification: The Complete Industry Cycle (Systems on Silicon) Overview

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Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs Review

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Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs ReviewIt doesn't take very long to figure out that the authors really like blade servers.
They like their space savings, cable plant simplicity, and uniformity. There are very detailed (although never critical) descriptions of each manufacturer's product lines and some very exhaustive matrices comparing not only blade servers but virtualization products as well.
My problems are in the details. First of all, it is clear that in many cases the benefits being credited to blade servers accrue ONLY because those blade servers are running virtualization products. Moreover, in many cases it is unclear why the benefits would not have accrued to commodity scale out servers running virtualization products.
Two, there are some claims that just stretch credulity too far. For instance, it is claimed that a provisioning a new blade server can be done in a few hours while doing the same with a rack mount server can take weeks.
Bearing in mind that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have all constructed their massive data centers with rack mount servers, you have to wonder how they could have made the same mistake (from the author's point of view) several hundred thousand times for each vendor.
The fact of the matter is that blades are a perfect choice for certain data center environments, but not others. Today they constitute ~ 15 % of all server shipments and most vendors hope to get that up to ~20% by 2010.
What's the hold up? Well, blade servers cost more per unit of computing power. Their form factors are proprietary, so their is considerable vendor lock-in (and thus higher prices). And the switches built for each blade center are vastly more expensive and slower to adopt new features than standalone modular or fixed form factor switches.
Conversely, virtualization is a wonderful add-on for certain types of compute applications, but not all. (For the technically inclined, if compute latency is at a premium, or the computations requires large amounts of state to be held in memory, then virtualization is going to be at best a mixed blessing and quite possibly make things worse.) Such limitations are alluded to peripherally, but never spoken to head on.
That's a darn shame. Had the authors included a chapter on when blades make sense and when virtualization makes sense, this would have easily been a 5 star book for me. The writing style is lucid and flows well. The authors are clearly experienced in their field. However, the assertion that blades and virtualization are a broad based panacea for most types of organizations and data centers just does not conform to the facts.Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs Overview
Blade server systems and virtualization are key building blocks for Next Generation Enterprise Data centers
Blades offer modular, pre-wired, ultra high-density servers (up to 10x traditional servers) with shared components (power, cooling, switches) – reducing complexity and cost, and improving flexibility, availability, manageability, and maintainability
Virtualization enables consolidation of physical servers by allowing many virtual servers to run concurrently on one physical server – improving system utilization, reducing the total number of physical servers, reducing costs, and increasing flexibility
This is the first book covering these complementary technologies and how, together, they provide a strong foundation for the future
It examines the history, architectures, features, examples, and user case studies of blade systems and virtualization, and offers guidance and considerations for how to evaluate and implement solutions


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Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age (Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation series) Review

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Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age (Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation series) ReviewThis is a great book. While it is from an `Academic' press, it is not at all pedantic or overbearing. In fact, it is a fascinating story of Grace Hopper and the amazing contribution that she and her team made to the development of computers. It also provides an insight into that development unlike any other. The fascinating aspect of this is that much of what we do today - from flow charting to debugging had to be invented and it was - by Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper. If you are at all interested in understanding the amazing tale of our computer development and the amazing impact that Grace Hopper had on that development, this is a must read!Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age (Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation series) OverviewThe career of computer visionary Grace Murray Hopper, whose innovativework in programming laid the foundations for the user-friendliness of today'spersonal computers that sparked the information age.

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