techweb.com
Virtual world simplifies life for engineers
Terry Costlow
Mark Hashemi and Randall Dombrowski live on opposite coasts and use the Web for vastly different reasons, but they're firmly convinced that the virtual world is a great place to be. Whether they're checking in on a huge computer simulation or listening to a chief technology officer discuss new technologies, they're doing things that test the limited bandwidth of the Internet today.
When Hashemi is doing IC simulations or synthesis, he often checks in on their progress from home, providing a nice trade-off between getting work done and enjoying his family. Although simulations of the controller chips he designed at Oak Technologies are extremely large, he checked them even though the modem on his home PC is a bit archaic.
"Most of my stuff is very graphical, looking at waveforms, looking at simulation results of a chip design," said Hashemi, formerly a project leader at Oak (Sunnyvale, Calif.). "Connecting with a 28.8 modem is not as fast as being there, but I definitely get my work done. One of the things I like to do is to kick off simulation runs or synthesis runs before I leave for home. Then I can check on them from home and correct anything that has gone wrong. They are long runs, so checking things from home saves almost a full day."
Down in Florida, Dombrowski is now a consultant, having decided he no longer wanted to be part of a large corporation. He's got a problem common to many small-company/self-employed people who don't live in large, high-tech meccas like Silicon Valley or Boston: It's hard to keep up to date with new products and ideas. He's found that online presentations provide even more information than did the executives who used to make presentations at the corporation for which he used to work.
"I worked for a graphics company at Lockheed Martin, and we normally had enough influence with part vendors and EDA companies that they would come to our site with fairly high-level people," said Dombrowski, a consultant at EDA Consulting Group (Orlando, Fla.). "I've been involved in about a dozen Internet seminars that have a similar format. I've been very pleased. The caliber of people doing the Web sessions are CTOs and very-high-level people, and they're not just canned presentations."
Dombrowski has no plans to cut back on his participation in these online seminars. He feels they are far easier to schedule than comparable sessions where technical executives come to a regional site to which he has to drive. In addition, it is much easier to opt out of a seminar that doesn't suit his specific needs when he's sitting at his computer.
One thing that's very appealing to him is that the virtual world is more interactive than a real-world meeting. In many of the sessions, users can ask questions during the presentation and even look at real-time answers on the side when they aren't interested in a portion of the main presentation. Dombrowski noted that since the seminars are "attended" by people from many other sites, the questions are far more interesting than when all the attendees are from the same company and therefore have similar views.
"The questions come from everywhere, people are from Romania and Australia," Dombrowski said. "They bring up questions I never would have thought of. I've found the chat sessions where people ask questions are real helpful. Sometimes when traffic is heavy and the audio goes in and out, I've found I could be in the chat session reading questions and responses and not really lose anything."
Problems with audio and video are inherent in most Webcasts at this point in the Internet's evolution. Even a highly touted trial video program that linked well-heeled sponsors like Intel and PBS' The Business Channel sent over the Web in April was not without flaws. International Data Corp. (Framingham, Mass.) surveyed the participants after that broadcast and found that "everyone commented on the video disruptions." While they found those glitches acceptable given that the Webcast was a trial, the IDC analysts noted that "this forgiveness will grow low with each successive program to the point where participants will find it unacceptable."
Satisfied with status quo
But until the Internet has the unlimited bandwidth that pundits say will come in the next few years, early adopters are willing to make do with what they can get now. After all, being able to ask the CTO how to use a new product, or being home at a reasonable hour while still meeting tight production deadlines, are worth some sacrifice.
"The only bottleneck is that because the network link at work is faster, the workstations there are able to get graphical commands a lot faster," said Hashemi, who recently became principal design engineer at a home-networking startup, Avio Digital Inc. (San Carlos, Calif.). "At home I have the bottleneck of a 28.8 modem. If I'm just submitting a task or checking a text file, the modem is just as fast as the networked workstation."
Tools aplenty
The tool Hashemi used at Oak is a program from GraphOn Corp. (San Jose, Calif.) that lets an application on a server appear on any client by transmitting data over the Web. As one of a growing number of application service providers, GraphOn will also rent its software, making it possible for engineers to use corporate copies of a licensed program that they rarely need. Hashemi noted that while the program is designed for use over the Web, it could also be used to effectively turn a slow PC into a powerful workstation when engineers need to quickly add extra terminals.
Now that he's designing home networks at Avio, he's learning a new tool from Hummingbird Communications Ltd. (Toronto) that is more suited to networking. Many of the requirements are the same: lots of work and a yen to spend time at home, he said.
Dombrowski doesn't even have to buy a program to tune in to the Webcasts. The consultant watches for notifications from companies that provide these Webcasts for IC vendors, EDA suppliers and others. These suppliers predict this market will heat up during 2000.
"The wave is now on the horizon and you can see it coming," said Robert Edelman, founder of ENEN.com, a San Diego company that does business-to-business Internet broadcasting.
Given the pressures to get products out in brief cycles, Dombrowski and Hashemi agree that the role of the Internet is bound to increase. For IC designers and others who want to do several long runs in parallel, it's a real blessing to be able to start one run before leaving work, another before going to bed and yet another before heading to the office in the morning. Then there's the benefit of being able to work when you can't get into the office.
"A while ago, my wife and daughter were both ill, so I had to stay home," Hashemi said. "I was able to log in from home and do some work while I was taking care of them. This kind of software has been a lifesaver for me. It lets me get work done in a reasonable manner."
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