Title: Infineon
1Topic The Importance of Documentation
Date 23 October 2006
Infineon
Presenter Serrie-justine Chapman Company
Infineon Technologies Department Automotive,
Industrial and Multimarket Job Title Senior
Verification Engineer
2The Importance of Documentation
For uwe presentation use only
- The Company
- The Documentation Flow
- The problems
- Solutions
3An Overview of the Company
- Infineon is part of the Semi-conductor industry
making chips for various commercial purposes. - Within Infineon we have a communications group
which is wireless and wireline, and the
Automotive, Industrial and Multimarket group. - The Automotive group, alongside other safety
critical industries such as avionics and military
have to work to a greater quality standard than
other groups such as wireless - Automotive chips also work at extreme
temperatures and have to allow for single digit
ppm (part per million) failure rates as well as
having to take into account the cost of
litigation should anything fail
4Note Business units assigned to segments
according to majority of business.
5Speed of production
- In wireless there is generally a 6 month to 2
year project run from designing the chip to
delivering it - In Automotive this time is increased to be closer
to 10 years. Therefore something that we are
working on today may not reach the Mercedes that
it is being designed for until 2016!! - The reason for this difference in time is because
of issues such as the higher temperatures, higher
quality and lead time in new car development. - Things such as engineers leaving and thus
valuable information being lost is a very
expensive cost, both in terms of quality of the
product and Time to market. - During the lifecycle communication is VERY
important.
6The design process
- Okay, so on the face of it, it may appear a
simple issue - Theres a problem
- somone solves it
- it gets discussed
- The solution is
- agreed on the customer gets the product
- The item is produced
7Reality
- 1) The customer has a problem
- 2) The Company offers a solution
- 3) It gets agreed contractually
- 4) It then gets designed
- 5) The design gets implemented
- 6) The design gets verified
- 7) The customer changes their mind and nos 2 6
gets repeated again (this may iterate a few
times!!) - 8) The chip gets produced
- 9) The cutomer gets the product
8Which part is the most expensive?
- The Fabrication process production of the chip
is most important and most expensive - Need to ensure
- No Respin (most expensive and probably the most
common) each spin costs between .5 2 million
dollars takes months - Therefore need to ensure all functionality is
well tested and meets the user requirements
before it goes into silicon - Time to market is also an expensive issue make
something too slowly then you end up with no
customer
9Complexity
- Within each product theres the application and
software within it, the microprocesser (which
itself is made up of many sub blocks) then the
system peripherals and the system itself -
- At present we are working on a chip where we have
3 ip block teams working in Bristol, the
microprocessor team also in Bristol, then theres
the other ip block team in Xian and the overall
systems team in Munich. - Most people never get to speak to their
counterparts on a project (other than in their
teams) and most communication is done only via
the documentation
10System design IS complex !!
11The documentation within a typical project
- User requirements
- Concept engineering
- 1 team at the top end, then there are subteams to
produce overall concept of design and then
separate teams for each part of the subsytem.
From this the Architecture Specification is
formed - Design spec
- Many separate blocks
- Verification spec for each implementation spec
- Maybe more dependant on what verification
methodology is being used, but for every design
spec at least one verification spec exists. - RTL
- Vhdl was originally seen as an implementable spec
but in reality too complex to use in this way
usually many thousands of lines of code - Tests
- currently for TriCore over 10,000 directed tests,
hundreds of properties and coverage points and
100 random tests
12Problems
- Semantics
- Clarity Understanding
- Constant change
- Where the documentation is
- Lack of training
- Lack of time
13Semantics The meaning or the interpretation of
a word, sentence, or other language form
- Language Translation from German or secondary
languages or the writers understanding of the
language is an issue. Infineon has around 35000
employees in many wordwide locations as an
estimate 95 of these are not natural English
speakers. - Syntax The grammar and how things are
understood the book eats, shoots and leaves
is a good example of this - Ambiguities Words that are commonly used in the
industry may cause issues shall, must, will etc
may have different understandings of their
meanings - Also just basically what a writer means by
something abort..
14Clarity
- Saying that something is clear to you may not be
as clear to someone else - If you try to explain 4 functions in one sentence
that may be unclear - If you try to write 1 explanation in 4 pages,
what is the reader looking to understand within
this?? - Understanding Will somebody read a sentence in
the same manner as you? Do you have some other
understanding of the system which you are failing
to notify the user about but that you are taking
as general knowledge and to what level should
you explain??
15.... And the rest
- When a document is changed how thoroughly do you
consider the effects on other documentation? - What Documents are you using - are they the
correct ones? - Training ...?
- Time 20 of the time spent in a project should be
spent ensuring that youre getting the
documentation right! - However what we do know is ....
- Most engineers would rather bite off a limb
rather than comment code or do documentation.
16Solutions
- Central version controlled documentation area
- A place where the documents are stored and when
an update occurs it can overwrite the previous
one so the user will always pick up the latest
release - Agreement on language and tools for writing
documentation - What language will all documents be written in
(generally english) what tool shall we use
word/framemaker?? - Documentation Templates
- Including spec writing guidelines Avionics
standard for ambiguous words - Enforcing Documentation Reviews
- Need to ensure that people put aside the time to
actually read them - Milestones
- Include essential documents are written for a
release to be achieved
17Link the documents
- Traceability tools
- These link the documents and force them into
making sense to allow them to be tagged
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