In the 50th episode of our podcast, Dr Darbari talks to Dr Amin Shokrollahi. We trace Amin's journey from his early childhood, his interests in Mathematics to his current position as a CEO of Kandou - a company that specialises in low-power, high-speed, off-chip communication solutions. Amin describes himself as more of a mathematician than an electronics engineer. He outlines how he uses principles of abstraction in Mathematics/CS in real-life projects. Amin explains the retimer technology that Kando uses in their cutting-edge Matterhorn USB Type-C solution.

How can we make teaching formal methods more effective? What is the relationship between SQL and first-order logic? We used logic to design computers, now we use computers to perform logic reasoning, so is there a relation between machine learning and logic? How does a human brain perform reasoning? Is machine learning and logic the answer to all the major questions facing society? How do incomplete information and statistical bias fit into this? What does risk assessment mean? Tune in to our latest podcast to hear what Prof. Vardi has to say about these topics.

This week Dr Darbari talks to Prof. Moshe Vardi - one of the best-known names in computing and formal methods. In the first of the two episodes, we trace Moshe's journey from his early years and talk about logic, applications of logic to law, NP-complete problems, ENIAC, John von Neumann, John Backus, compilers, semantics, abstractions, descriptions. Moshe shares fascinating accounts of chat with Ed Clarke and the history of LTL, CTL, SVA and PSL. Find out why model checking works. Thank you very much, Moshe, for taking time out to talk to us.

Pleased to bring up the second part of the chat with Prof. Supratik Chakaraborty from IIT Bombay. We talk on boolean function synthesis, AI/ML, BDDs and SAT. Find out the next big thing in synthesis that has the potential to break the RSA! 

Prof. Supratik Chakraborty is our guest this week. Tune in to find out how he came full circle from the corridors of IIT in his under-grad to being one of the top leaders in formal methods at IIT Bombay. In the first of the two-part podcast, Supratik talks to Dr Darbari about his passion for asynchronous circuits & formal methods, and word-level abstractions, and symbolic trajectory evaluation. Supratik shares his insights in teaching and research in formal methods and makes a strong case about why formal methods would be necessary for the design of machine learning hardware.

This week Dr Darbari talks to Ravi Thummarukudy. Hear Ravi's fascinating story from growing up in a village in Kerala with no electricity to being a CEO of one of the top design IP companies Mobiveil Inc. From IIT Madras, and days at ISRO, Ravi describes how he moved on to make Mobiveil a trustworthy name in design IP using the mantra trust but verify.

This week we discuss our new formal verification course launched on 6 April, last week. If you're looking to understand how to apply formal methods, especially for industrial projects in VLSI, then we have something for you.

This week, Dr. Darbari talks to Dr. Daniel Zimmerman, Principal Researcher from Galois Inc. Lot of exciting conversation on formal methods and their applications to cryptography, homomorphic computing and Daniel also reveals the secret Ninja formal methods and the work done with Amazon on deploying software analysis.

This week Bob Smith is our guest. Bob is an executive director of the ESD Alliance, a SEMI Strategic Association Partner. He is responsible for the management and operations of the ESD Alliance, an international association of companies providing goods and services throughout the semiconductor design ecosystem.

How do we know when the proof is the valid proof? Can we always see the proof? Are visible proofs required for verification? Can you trust invisible proofs for sign-off? Welcome to formal verification! Tune in to this week's podcast to learn more.

In this episode, Dr. Darbari talks to a key leader in the field of the RISC-V ecosystem - Dr. Zvonimir Bandic - Senior director, Western Digital. Zvonimir traces his journey to the USA and describes the exciting field of storage and hard drives. We talk about the CHIPS alliance, open-source, and how Western Digital is influencing the RISC-V ecosystem.

We demystify abstraction in today's podcast. Abstraction is the cornerstone of modern-day scalable formal verification. Classic papers in formal literature talk about abstraction as a Galois connection, but understanding abstraction when you're new to formal is not easy. We discuss it in detail in our upcoming webinar on 11 Feb 2021 but for now, here is an intuitive and simple explanation of abstraction and refinement.

We kick-off 2021 with our first podcast, talking to Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International. Dr. Darbari asks Calista about the challenges and opportunities for the RISC-V revolution. Calista traces her roots from her days in IBM to what it takes to run an international organization spreading an open-source revolution in computer architecture like never seen before.

Dr. Ashish Darbari delves into the findings of the 2020 Wilson Research report with Harry Foster in the last podcast this year. Together we gain more insight into design and verification trends. With 68% projects running behind schedule, and an equal number requiring respin for IC/ASIC, is the industry doing enough? With 23% of the semiconductor designs using RISC-V; and the headcount ratio of verification to design being 5:1 for processor verification, perhaps it's time to reflect and ask  - are we doing enough? With these thoughts, we sign-off 2020, wishing you all Happy holidays and merry Christmas.

We talk about hardware security this week. Tune in to bootstrap yourself with a primer on hardware security with Dr. Jason Oberg - CTO of Tortuga Logic. Jason is one of the best-known names in the industry in the field of hardware security.

Learn how to sign-off formal verification using six dimensions of coverage. Metric-driven verification is important, but we need to consider all aspects when using formal verification including qualitative and quantitative methods. We made it easy for you to use the six dimensions of coverage to sign-off RISC-V verification. Find out about it in more detail next week at the RISC-V summit.

Dr. Darbari talks about a new coverage solution for formal verification - scenario coverage. He describes why you need it, what it is, and how this has been used to verify the latest core from the OpenHW group - CVE4. Let's cover our formal verification properly.

This week Dr. Darbari talks to Dr. Lucio Lanza - Managing Director of Lanza techVentures and the 2014 recipient of the Phil Kaufman Award for Distinguished Contributions to Electronic System Design. We talk about some of the exciting things Lucio did in his early days in Olivetti, Intel, Daisy Systems, and Cadence to his current engagement in pervasive healthcare. Previously, Dr. Lanza was a non-executive director of Arm, the world’s leading semiconductor IP company, and a member of the board of directors of Harris & Harris Group, an investor in transformative companies enabled by disruptive science. He currently serves as chairman of the board of PDF Solutions, Inc., a provider of technologies to improve semiconductor manufacturing yields, and is on the board of directors of several private companies.

Dr. Darbari got together with Rajat Swarup - a cyber-security expert and ex-Director of Information Security, Blackrock. We talk about computer security, its origins, its impact on software, hardware security, and the role of formal methods. We ask Rajat about simple ways of keeping us safe.

Do you always need a GPU for L4/L5 autonomous driving? This week, Dr. Darbari sat down with Khaled Maalej - Founder & CEO, VSORA, a provider of high-performance silicon intellectual property (IP) solutions for artificial intelligence, digital communications, and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) applications based in France. Find out how VSORA's unique solutions are powering the next generation of driverless cars. We talk about programmable DSP, performance, low-power, and verification of petaflop computers on wheels.