EEWebPULSE_2012_i0056.pdf

EE Web

PULSE

EE Web.com

Issue 56

July 24, 2012

Barry Katz

President and CTO

SiSoft

Electrical Engineering Community

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Barry Katz

SISOFT

Interview with Barry Katz - President and CTO of SiSoft

Simulating Large Systems with Thousands

of Serial Links

BY BARRY KATZ, WALTER KATZ, MICHAEL STEINBERGER,

DONALD TELIAN & SERGIO CAMERLO

A detailed analysis of the virtual environment that is capable of both verifying connectivity

and simulating any and all of the channels in large systems.

Fe a tured Products

Optimizing Your Next Temperature

Measurement Configuration -

Part 2: Thermocouples

BY ROBERT GREEN WITH KEITHLEY

An overview of several sources of temperature measurement error that are specific to

thermocouples.

Intersil Fisheye IC Lense Made Simple

BY JONPAUL JANDU WITH INTERSIL

How to take warped fisheye images and revert them to their normal rectiilinear picture

format for real-world application.

RTZ - Return to Zero Comic

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INTERVIEW

Barry

Katz

SiSoft

President and CTO

How did you get into

engineering and when did

you start?

I started my career at Digital

Equipment Corporation (DEC)

as part of the semiconductor

group where I was part of a team

responsible for writing system level

signal integrity tools supporting

the design of systems utilizing

Alpha processors as well as other

high-speed ASICs and supporting

chipsets. In this role I was ultimately

involved in the signal integrity of

nearly every Alpha-based system

ranging from workstations to high-

end servers working with signal

integrity engineers to deploy signal

integrity tools and methodology on

their projects.

Will you tell us about your

extensive experience in

developing tools to integrate

and automate a wide range

of signal integrity analysis

processes?

Throughout my career, I have

always had a focus on automation.

This started with automated post-

route crosstalk analysis tools and

has led to tools for performing pre-

and post-route integrated signal

integrity, timing, and crosstalk

analysis. My most recent efforts

have been focused on serial link

analysis where my team and I are

focused on signaling at rates up to

28Gbps.

What have been some of your

inluences that have helped

you get to where you are

today?

I’ve been very fortunate in this area.

My father is an EDA pioneer and

entrepreneur and has provided me

guidance and mentoring throughout

my career. The team of grad students

and advisors I had the opportunity

to work with at Carnegie Mellon

University were also influential. The

work I did at DEC both before and

after forming SiSoft as well as the

projects I have had the opportunity

to work on at Ericsson, Cisco, Intel,

and many other companies have

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INTERVIEW

some of our major customers on

emerging products targeting the 4G

LTE market. These designs exhibit

Do you have any note-worthy

engineering experiences?

Every year you continue to grow

and you have great experiences.

In looking back at all of these, I

do look back to a few noteworthy

experiences. Our DesignVision

award for QCD was one of the

great accomplishments of our

team at SiSoft. Of particular note

this year was the work highlighted

with Ericsson that we did on Virtual

Prototype Analysis where we

demonstrated automated post-route

simulation on thousands of links in

a large backplane system. Also,

recently, was the work we did in

driving the new IBIS-AMI modeling

standard which is key to modeling

the equalization and clock recovery

of SerDes devices.

been influential. Lastly, my family.

My wife and two boys are my rock

and support me every day.

Do you have any tricks up

your sleeve?

I will tell you the key attribute that

sets myself and my team at SiSoft

apart. These days, the problems

we SI engineers have to solve

on a daily basis have become

increasingly complex. Utilizing

software tools to automate the

solving of these problems has

become a requirement. Many

engineers will use these tools

and accept the answers they get

down to the 8th decimal point as

gospel. My advice is don’t. Build

an intuition of what you expect the

answers to be and test that intuition.

It’s almost like you are trying to

predict the answer before you get it

so that when you get the answer you

can validate

As a business,

we are customer

focused and will

remain focused on

close collaborative

relationships with

systems designers

and their suppliers.

We will continue

to work with

these customers

and their semi-

conductor vendors

to ensure high

quality, high-

performance,

accurate models

are available for

simulation of

their systems.

How do you continue to be

actively involved with leading

edge high-speed design?

We are very lucky to have close

collaborative relationships with

our major system customers and

semiconductor partners. It’s these

relationships and working closely

on current and next generation

projects that enable us to stay

ahead of the curve. We are working

on the leading edge and solving

tomorrow’s problems today. The

credit goes to my team who always

rise to the challenge and the rapidly

changing landscape that is signal

integrity.

whether it makes sense.

The other advice I would share with

you is that whatever you do in life,

maintain balance with work, family

and hobbies.

What has been your favorite

project?

My favorite software development

project has been the development

of Quantum Channel Designer®

(QCD), SiSoft’s Multi-Gigabit

Serial Link Analysis Tool, which

my team has been working on for

five years now and will continue to

develop into the future. Technology

is moving so fast in this area with

emerging standards and higher

data rates, it keeps the work very

exciting. On the hardware side,

I have been fortunate to have the

opportunity to collaborate with

I saw that you have played

a key role in leading tool

development efforts for SiSoft’s

products. How have you done

this?

With any new product, standard,

or capability, it always starts with

a vision and recognition that

complexity on an extreme scale in

terms of speed, size and density.

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